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 Earth Science chemistry, ocean and land ecosystems. It was a NASA scientist, Dr. James Hansen, who first alerted the world to the dangers of global warming due to greenhouse gases emitted by human burning of fossil fuels. Earth Science research also provides the foundations of understanding for the search for extraterrestrial life through the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI), in which the focus is often on the extreme conditions for life to survive. NASA Earth Science NASA Earth Science, formerly called the NASA Earth Science Enterprise (ESE), formerly called Mission To Planet Earth (MTPE), is a NASA research program "to develop a scientific