The Mars 2020 Mission with Rover Perseverance successfully landed at Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021
XIA collaborated with NASA/JPL and contributed to the PIXL instrument on the Mars Rover, which will help search for signs of ancient life on Mars.
NASA’s mission to Mars in 2020 will look for signs of habitable conditions and microbial life in the ancient past. The rover’s Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) is a microfocus x-ray fluorescence instrument that will perform 2D fast mapping of rock samples with sub-mm spatial resolution, revealing the geochemical fine structure of the Martian surface. XIA’s technology and expertise is being utilized in the digital signal processing and fast mapping of the x-ray detector signal. PIXL will operate with higher spatial resolution and at higher speed than any previous planetary probe, and along with other instruments it will help answer the question “Was there ever life on Mars?”
Founded in 1985, SilvaCo’s current sales lines include PMTs and scintillators for customers who potentially seek the type of spectroscopy electronics that XIA can provide. CEO and Founder Peter Silva is excited to expand the SilvaCo product range into the x-ray and gamma-ray markets, and looks forward to a long and fruitful relationship with XIA.
XIA offers a friendly yet highly stimulating technical environment. We regularly collaborate with US National Laboratories and industrial partners, carrying out original scientific research, as well as more conventional product-oriented engineering. Our culture is thus a challenging but rewarding mix of academic intellectual rigor, and nut-and-bolts engineering. Successful candidates will be intellectually stimulated both by working with top-level specialists — inside the company and out — and by developing products that significantly advance the state of the art.
We are pleased to announce that Alpha Sciences Inc. (ASI), manufacturer of gas flow proportional alpha particle counters, is now part of XIA LLC (XIA). See 
