Status of Mirror Development for the Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS)

The Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS) is a NASA sounding rocket instrument designed to observe soft X-ray emissions at 0.5 - 2.0 keV energies (24 - 6 Å) from a solar active region. MaGIXS will, for the first time, obtain spatially resolved spectra of high-temperature, low-emission plasma within an active region core. The unique optical design includes a Wolter I telescope and a 3-optic grazing incidence spectrograph. The spectrograph consists of a finite conjugate, stigmatic mirror pair and a planar varied line space grating. The grazing incidence mirrors are being developed at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and are produced using electroform nickel-replication techniques, employing the same facilities developed for HERO, FOXSI, ART-XC and IXPE. The MaGIXS mirror mandrels have been fabricated, figured, and have completed the first phase of polishing. A set of three test shells were replicated and exposed to X-rays in the Stray Light Facility (SLF) at MSFC. Here we present results from mandrel metrology and X-ray testing at the SLF. We also discuss the development of a new polishing technique for the MaGIXS mirror mandrels, where we plan to use the Zeeko polishing machine.