When NASA's latest Mars rover makes it to the red planet next August, scientists are hoping to get a clearer understanding of the terrain's chemical composition.
To do so, the Curiosity rover will make use of a device that Canadian scientists helped develop and fine tune, and which has been used in previous rover missions to Mars.
It's called an Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and it allows scientists back on Earth to remotely analyze the composition of rocks and soil located on Mars.
Iain Campbell, a physics professor at the University of Guelph, said the tiny device uses a small amount of radioactive material to do its job.
"It's a little box the size of a coffee cup and it has got in it a radioactive material which beams out nuclear radiation a couple of centimeters away from a Martian rock," Campbell told CTV's Canada AM on Friday.
"And when the rock is illuminated this way, it emits its own X-rays. "
Campbell said instruments are then used to record the characteristic X-rays produced by all the elements present in the rocks and soil around the rover.
And that data helps scientists understand what those samples are made up of.
"With some computing we figure out the percentage of iron, the percentage of silicon, the percentage of whatever. And so we have a complete analysis of that rock, or soil, or whatever it is we're looking at," said Campbell.
The APXS is one of 10 scientific instruments on the Mars rover.
The $2.5-billion Curiosity rover is due to launch from Cape Canaveral on Saturday.
NASA expects it will arrive at its destination in about nine months.
