The Marshall 100-Meter X-ray Beamline Facility

The Marshall 100-Meter X-ray Beamline is a world-class calibration facility for the testing of X-ray telescope instrumentation. Alternatively named the Stray Light Test Facility, the beamline is located inside NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and has recently been upgraded for the calibration of the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) Space Telescope mission. It was also employed in the pre-flight testing of the Astronomical Roentgen Telescope X-ray Concentrator (ART-XC) mission. Additionally, the Marshall 100-Meter has been critical in the development of sub-orbital class missions such as the Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager (FOXSI) sounding rocket mission and the High Energy Replicated Optics (HERO/HEROES) science balloon telescope. Its large instrument chamber, variety of X-ray sources, translation stages, and focal plane detector capabilities make it essential for MSFC’s internal optic development efforts. The Marshall 100-Meter is advertised to successful Astrophysics Research and Analysis (APRA) funded projects with additional community support to other NASA Centers, Universities, and Industry available through contact with the authors.