It’s an invention so clever, it just won a prestigious NASA award.  And it’s literally out of this world.

The CheMin (Chemistry and Mineralogy) instrument developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center with the participation of two SETI Institute scientists, has just garnered the NASA Government Invention of the Year Award. 

CheMin is now on Mars, as one of the most important instruments aboard the Curiosity rover.  Its task is to untangle which minerals are present on the martian surface, and thereby give scientists clues as to whether liquid water once ebbed and flowed here.

Essentially a miniaturized chemistry lab, CheMin not only had to withstand the rigors of a trip to the Red Planet, but also conduct its tests without being overseen by a scientist.  It drills into interesting rocks, and wrestles the resultant powder into an X-ray diffraction analyzer.  The analyzer can then ascertain which minerals are present.  Institute scientists Friedemann Freund and Phillipe C. Sarrazin were part of the team that designed and built this impressive bit of hardware.

“CheMin is a remarkable invention,” says David Morrison, Director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute. “It starts with the bulky lab concept of X-ray crystallography and dramatically simplifies, miniaturizes, and ruggedizes it to create an instrument for field use on Earth, and one of the key analysis instruments on the Mars rover Curiosity.”