[tempaway11722]

Yes it sounds like they had to do some MacGyver level stuff at the last minute. As I understand it NDL (Navigation Doppler Lidar) was a NASA project bundled aboard the craft as a non-mission-critical demo but when the main naviagation failed they had to send a patch to the craft (about two hours before landing) to activate NDL and use it as the main navigation. Hoping more details come out about this.

[witx]

I doubt they had the time to pull MacGyver stuff. This scenario was most likely already predicted and tested and it was a matter of changing configurations.