Curiosity (rover) Ontario, NASA, the University of California, San Diego and Cornell University. The APXS instrument takes advantage of particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) and X-ray fluorescence, previously exploited by the Mars Pathfinder and the Mars Exploration Rovers. CheMin is the Chemistry and Mineralogy X-ray powder diffraction and fluorescence instrument. CheMin is one of four spectrometers. It can identify and quantify the abundance of the minerals on Mars. It was developed by David Blake at NASA Ames Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and won the 2013 NASA Government Invention of the year award. The rover can drill samples from rocks and
Mars Exploration Rover Reddit that appeared to depict a human penis carved into the Martian dirt. On May 16, 2013, NASA announced that "Opportunity" had driven further than any other NASA vehicle on a world other than Earth. After "Opportunity's" total odometry went over , the rover surpassed the total distance driven by the Apollo 17 Lunar Roving Vehicle. On July 28, 2014, NASA announced that "Opportunity" had driven further than any other vehicle on a world other than Earth. "Opportunity" covered over , surpassing the total distance of driven by the Lunokhod 2 lunar rover, the previous record-holder. On March 23, 2015,