The basis for inXitu began in 2003 when Philippe Sarrazin worked with NASA to file a patent on techniques used to develop the
CheMin instrument for the Mars
Curiosity rover. Sarrazin left NASA to form inXitu Research, which received two
Small Business Innovation Research grants from
Ames Research Center in 2004 to continue work on CheMin. MPT's research and development in high vacuum systems was meshed with inXitu's experience with XRD equipment, and in early 2008 the company released
Terra, a commercial field-portable XRD/XRF instrument. inXitu formed a partnership with Innov-X in December 2008, in which inXitu would manufacture XRD equipment for sale under the Innov-X brand name. Also in 2008, inXitu worked with the
Getty Conservation Institute to develop
X-Duetto, a portable and non-destructive XRD/XRF device used for the analysis of works of art. It was commercially released as
Duetto in mid 2009. The company released the
BTX instrument in mid 2009, which is a desktop XRD/XRF device developed from Terra; the second generation
BTX-II was released in early 2010. inXitu was purchased by Olympus in November 2011. ==References==