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
When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions (or NASA's Greatest Missions: When We Left Earth in the UK) is a Discovery Channel HD documentary miniseries consisting of six episodes documenting American human spaceflight, spanning from the first Mercury flights through the Gemini program to the Apollo moon landings, the Space Shuttle, and the construction of the International Space Station. It was created in association with NASA to commemorate the agency's fiftieth anniversary in 2008. It first aired on June 8, 2008, and concluded on June 22. Each airing consisted of two hour-long episodes.