QinetiQ

ESA’s ‘Soret Coefficient in Crude Oil’ experiment will test diffusion effects in high-pressure crude oil (Photo: ESA/Anneke Le Floc'h)

Astronomy

The European Space Agency (ESA) is shipping crude oil into space. This may seem like the worst market in the Universe to expand into, but there's method behind this petroleum madness.

The penetrator hitting the ice target as part of efforts to develop a way to deliver instruments beneath a planet's surface (Image: Astrium)

Astronomy

ESA fires surface penetrators at ice target in search of planetary burrowers

Normally, a spacecraft slamming into a planet’s surface at the speed of sound is considered a bad thing, but the European Space Agency (ESA) plans to do just that. Last July, the agency fired a pair of experimental surface penetrators from a rocket sled at a test facility in Wales.

A prototype of the "stealth" blade developed by QinetiQ and Vestas is fitted onto a Vestas V90 turbine at Swaffham Wind Park in Norfolk (Image: QinetiQ)

Environment

Stealth wind turbines developed to avoid radar confusion

QinetiQ and Vestas have created stealth technology for wind turbines which make them virtually invisible to radar