That’s just a small taste of what PIXL, combined with the arm’s other instruments, is expected to reveal as it zeroes in on promising geological features over the weeks and months ahead. “We got our best-ever composition analysis of Martian dust before it even looked at rock,” Allwood said. Located at the end of the arm, the lunchbox-size instrument fired its X-rays at a small calibration target – used to test instrument settings – aboard Perseverance and was able to determine the composition of Martian dust clinging to the target. Called PIXL, or Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry, the rover’s X-ray instrument delivered unexpectedly strong science results while it was still being tested, said Abigail Allwood, PIXL’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
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