Development of light weight replicated X-ray optics

Nearly all X-ray astronomy missions of the past 25 years have utilized grazing incidence telescopes which use the principle of nested shells to maximize the collecting area. Most of these missions have had multiple X-ray telescopes, e.g. ASCA¹, Beppo-SAX², Suzaku³, XMM-Newton⁴, NuStar⁵, and also upcoming missions Astro-H⁶ and Spectrum-Röentgen-Gamma⁷. Multiple telescopes, which favor replication, may continue to be the appropriate architecture of some future missions. XMM-Newton and the upcoming Spectrum-Röentgen-Gamma mission use an electroformed nickel replication (ENR) process to fabricate their X-ray telescope mirror shells, a process which has achieved the best angular resolution to date for replicated telescopes. We are developing a process to fabricate metal-ceramic replicated optics which will be lighter weight than current nickel replicated technology. They will be stiffer than the XMM mirrors, which we expect will result in better angular resolution. Recent results on fabrication and testing of these optics is presented.