DETECTIVES will soon be solving gun crimes and murder cases far faster using a simple handheld device that instantly confirms whether a suspect has recently fired a gun. Lab delays often mean suspects get away.
The idea for the handheld device was hatched under a new collaboration between NASA and the US National Institute of Justice. The plan is to adapt taxpayer-funded space research to fight terrestrial crime.
Jacob Trombka, a physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, set the ball rolling. He believes X-ray fluorescence (XRF) could be a key crime-fighting technology. It was used by…
