The Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS)

The Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS) is a NASA soundingrocket instrument designed to observe soft X-ray emissions at 0.5 - 2.0 keV energies in thesolar atmosphere. The primary science goal is to differentiate steady, low-frequency heatingevents from sporadic, high-frequency heating events in the active region core For the first time, high-temperature, low-emission plasma will be observed directly with 5 arcsec spatialand 22 mÅ spectral resolution. The novel optical design consists of a Wolter I telescope anda 3-optic grazing-incidence spectrograph. The X-ray spectrograph utilizes a finite conjugatemirror pair and a planar, nanoprinted-silicon varied line space grating, which is being devel-oped by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The telescope and spectrographmirrors will be nickel replicated and coated with iridium. Mandrel fabrication and nickelreplication will be done at MSFC as part of its replicated X-ray optics program. Mounting,alignment, and integration of the ight optics will be performed at the Harvard-SmithsonianCenter for Astrophysics (SAO). The MaGIXS science camera is being developed at MSFCand is based on CLASP heritage, which obtained read noise performance of 5.5 e?- RMS. Thecamera will include a e2v Technologies 2kx2k frame transfer CCD with 4-channel readout(500 kpixel/s/channel). We will present an overview of the MaGIXS optical system andfabrication of the telescope and spectrograph mirrors.