Mars Science Laboratory Entry, Descent and Landing System Development Challenges and Preliminary Flight Performance

The Mars Science Laboratory project recently landed the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. With the success of the landing system, the performance envelope of entry, descent, and landing capabilities has been extended over the previous state of the art. This paper will present an overview of the MSL entry, descent, and landing system, a discussion of a subset of its development challenges, and include a discussion of preliminary results of the flight reconstruction effort.