X-ray facility for the characterization of the Athena mirror modules at the ALBA synchrotron

The ALBA synchrotron (Barcelona, Spain) is building MINERVA a new X-ray beamline designed to support the development of the ATHENA mission (Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics). The beamline design is originally based on the monochromatic pencil beam XPBF 2.0 at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), at BESSY II. MINERVA will provide metrology capabilities to integrate stacks produced by cosine company into a mirror module (MM) and characterize them. It will provide photons with a fixed energy of 1.0 keV with a residual divergence below 1 × 1 arcsec2 rms. The beam dimensions at the mirror module is adjustable from 10 × 10 μm2 up to 8 × 8 mm2. Interoperability between MINERVA and XPBF 2.0 will be preserved in order to reinforce and boost the production and characterization of the mirror modules. MINERVA is funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Still in the detailed design phase, MINERVA will take 2 years to be completed for operation in 2022.