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.

The design of MARS beamline (infrastructure and optics) is also optimized to alternatively run two experimental stations in order to perform characterizations with transmission and high resolution X-ray powder-diffraction (XRD), Wide Angle X-ray Scattering (WAXS), standard and high resolution X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and microbeam techniques (microXRF, XAS, XRD).