MARS beamline is aiming to extend the research capabilities on radioactive matter ( a, ß, γ and n emitters) towards the use of synchrotron radiation in multidisciplinary fields (biology, chemistry, physics) with respect to safety national and European laws. This beamline will be considered as a listed installation under authorization from ASN (French Authority for Nuclear Security). Because of its special characteristics the total equivalent activities present at the same time including the storage on the beamline could be up to 185GBq with a maximum of 18.5GBq (0.5Ci) per sample.

Different types of characterizations are available on two different experimental stations : standard and high-energy resolution X-ray spectroscopy (XAS, HERFD, RIXS), transmission and high-angullar resolution X-ray diffraction (T-XRD, HR-XRD), Wide and Small Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS, SAXS) and associated X-ray microbeam techniques (µXRF/µXRD/µXAS) and microbeam techniques (microXRF, XAS, XRD) . X-ray full-field imaging is also available.