The Athena mission, under study and preparation by ESA as its second Large-class science
mission, requires the largest X-ray optics ever flown, building on a novel optics technology …

Silicon Pore Optics (SPO) uses commercially available monocrystalline double-sided super-
polished silicon wafers as a basis to produce mirrors that form lightweight and stiff high …

The Lynx X-ray Grating Spectrograph (XGS) is responsible for providing high throughput
and spectral resolution for soft x-ray energies. This instrument will help characterize the …

We present the latest progress on the industrial scale coating facility for the Advanced
Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics (ATHENA) mission. The facility has been …

The ATHENA (Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics) mission is steadily
progressing both in terms of system studies and technology developments. The mission is …

The PANTER X-ray test facility of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE)
has over 40 years of heritage in testing and calibrating x-ray optics. Having contributed to …

We present an experimental examination of iridium and boron carbide thin-film coatings for
the purpose of fabricating x-ray optics. We use a combination of x-ray reflectometry and x-ray …

We present the development of the reflective coating by magnetron sputtering deposition
onto precisely-fabricated thin X-ray mirrors. Our goal is to remove distortion induced by the …

ATHENA Silicon Pore Optics (SPO) Mirror Modules (MM) have to be tested and accepted
prior to integration in the full ATHENA Mirror Assembly (MA). X-ray tests of the MMs are …

Currently for the European Space Agency (ESA) ATHENA [1, 2] mission Silicon Pore Optic
(SPO)[3-8] Mirror Modules (MM) with a focal length of f= 12 m, are being developed and …