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
NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge The NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge, prior to 2014 referred to as the Great Moonbuggy Race, is an annual competition for high school and college students to design, build, and race human-powered, collapsible vehicles over simulated lunar/Martian terrain. NASA sponsors the competition, first held in 1994, and, since 1996, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center hosts. Students created vehicles dubbed "moonbuggies" to face challenges similar to those engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center addressed in preparation for Apollo 15. On that mission, on July 31, 1971, the first Lunar Roving Vehicle extended the range