Mars 2020 EDL Reconstruction As-Flown Report

On February 18, 2021, amidst a global pandemic sweeping the nation and the world, the Perseverance rover safely completed its autonomous landing in Jezero Crater. The largest, heaviest, and most complex planetary rover ever built depended on its seven-minute entry, descent, and landing (EDL) sequence to touch down safely at the most dangerous landing site ever attempted on Mars. Building upon the success of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, the Mars 2020 EDL system preserved as much of the MSL EDL architecture as possible while simultaneously fixing issues identified both pre- and post-MSL’s landing, adding mission enabling new EDL capabilities, and accommodating new mission-enhancing payloads. Reconstruction results to date have shown that the Mars 2020 EDL system performed largely as expected. Issues identified with MSL’s landing were successfully addressed during the Mars 2020 landing. The mission’s two new landing capabilities, range trigger and terrain relative navigation, proved critical in identifying and reaching a safe landing target within the hazardous Jezero Crater landing site, a site deemed too hazardous for previous landing systems. Finally, new EDL instrumentation and a new EDL camera suite gave the team greater insight into the landing performance and brought the world along for the ride. This As-Flown Reconstruction Report details the design, development challenges, pre-flight expectations, and flight performance of almost all aspects of the Mars 2020 EDL system. While this report captures the best understanding of the system as of the time of publication, no one knows better than this team that additional time and scrutiny will yield further insights; the team’s scrutiny of the MSL EDL system throughout the development of Mars 2020 led to several fixes and improvements to the EDL design. As a result, this report is a snapshot in time of the team’s best understanding of the performance of the system; expect that understanding to grow and evolve with future efforts. The Mars 2020 EDL team faced numerous challenges, some expected, some not, over the project’s lifecycle. Their engineering prowess, creativity, dedication, and can-do attitude allowed the tight-knit team to face each of these challenges and overcome them. This report documents their story. With Mars 2020’s successful landing, the edge of the Mars landing envelope has been pushed out once again, enabling the first controlled aircraft flights on another planet by the Ingenuity helicopter, the search for evidence of past life by the Perseverance rover, and the beginning of the long-envision Mars sample return campaign.