Unlike conventional cameras, our femto camera captures an image as one thin slice at a time of one-dimensional space using a "streak tube, " a laboratory instrument that is commonly used by chemists to study light passing through chemical samples.

CNN: A camera that can see around corners

The SeaWinds satellite, managed by NASA for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, carries a scatterometer instrument that has measured those sea winds via microwaves bounced off the ocean's surface since the satellite's launch in June.

CNN: graphic

Based on the Phoenix lander, the craft is tasked with giving us a peek beneath the planet's surface, armed with tools that include a geodetic instrument from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which will be used to calculate Mars' rotation axis, a seismic wave sensor and a subsurface heat probe, to measure the planet's internal temperature.

ENGADGET: NASA InSight tapped for Mars drilling mission in 2016

Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory hope that conventional fuel burning engines become an instrument of the past.

CNN: Lab develops engine for the future

"A dust-devil looks essentially like what you would expect from the movies - a tiny tornado that is lifting dust, " explained Manuel de la Torre Juarez of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and a scientist on the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (Rems) instrument.

BBC: Dust-devils flirt with Curiosity Mars rover