NESC Trajectory Optimization Workshop - EDL Challenge Problem

The NASA Engineering Safety Center (NESC) sponsored a trajectory optimization workshop in August 2024 at NASA Langley Research Center. As a result of this workshop, an effort began to formulate challenge problems in each of the domains of aeronautics, robotics, and entry, descent, and landing (EDL) to advance the state of the art of trajectory optimization. The plan is to disseminate the problems amongst academia and industry at
an upcoming conference. This report details the challenge problem for EDL, specifically powered descent.