NAVIGATION PERFORMANCE OF THE 2018 INSIGHT MARS LANDER MISSION

The NASA InSight spacecraft was launched successfully from Vandenberg Air Force Base on an Atlas V-401 launch vehicle on May 5, 2018 and landed on November 26, 2018. Accurate targeting to the atmospheric entry point by the Navigation team achieved by carefully controlling the final entry flight path angle to -12.0 degrees with a tolerance of +/-0.21 degrees. This paper will describe how the InSight Navigation team met this difficult task in the presence of frequent unbalanced thrusting for attitude control. The continuous correction for these rotations far exceeded pre-launch expectations and proved a challenge to predict accurately.