The Navigation and Mission Design Branch (NMDB) is one of several institutional support branches within the Mission Engineering & Systems Analysis (MESA) Division at Goddard Space Flight Center. Collectively, the branches are responsible for mission design and systems engineering for all missions at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. It brings together Mission Formulation, Systems Engineering, and Guidance, Navigation, and Control in one organization.

With over four decades of experience, the NMDB has developed a core expertise in navigation, trajectory design, and mission analysis support. NMDB's depth of expertise, combined with their broad array of capabilities, allows for the synthesis of flexible, client-driven solutions.

The Branch is responsible for providing analytic expertise in spacecraft navigation, trajectory design and control. The Branch creates and maintains state-of-the-art analysis tools for mission design, trajectory optimization, orbit analysis and navigation. The Branch also provides the expertise to support a wide range of flight dynamics services, such as spacecraft mission design and on-orbit operations. An active technology development program is maintained, with special emphasis on developing new techniques and algorithms for autonomous navigation systems and advanced approaches for trajectory design. Specific areas of expertise resident in the NMDB are:

• Trajectory analysis and control design
• Mission planning
• Estimation techniques
• Autonomous navigation
• Constellation and formation flying analysis
• Flight dynamics model development
• Spacecraft conjunction assessment
• Flight dynamics ground systems

The NMDB provides flight dynamics operations services through its Flight Dynamics Facility (FDF). This facility typically supports flight dynamics computations for more than twenty spacecraft. Operational services include orbit determination, acquisition data generation for the space and ground networks, tracking data evaluation and maneuver planning support. The FDF also supports Expendable Launch Vehicle (ELV) operations, International Space Station (ISS) orbit determination and Space Transportation System (STS) flight operations.