14 DAY TRIAL // Sending crude oil into space in order to learn how it behaves in deep underground reservoirs might not sound all that logical, but this is the method to ESA's latest madness.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has created highly pressurized containers and filled them with crude oil. The original, black liquid that spurts out of the ground and makes people dance in joy. In movies anyway.
Many studies have been done on it. Otherwise, no one would have figured out how to refine it into so many different types of fuel.
Still, there's always more to be learned. And one thing that was never explored was how crude oil behaves in deep underground reservoirs.
Understanding that could lead to a better “guesswork” as to where new reservoirs could be located, or how to better pull it out of the ground.
And since it's hard enough just to drill a hole at such depths, scientists had to go about tests in a different way.
Shooting oil crates into space doesn't quite qualify as a controlled environment, but removing one of the major factors (gravity) can shed a lot of light on the nature of the resource.
"The experiment is intended to sharpen our understanding of deep crude oil reservoirs, up to 7 to 8 km (4.3 to 5 mi) underground," says Antonio Verga, who is overseeing the project for ESA.
The first experiment module will be launched next year (2015) and will be part of a set of 19 experiments aboard China’s SJ-10 Shi Jian spacecraft. Yes, this will be ESA’s first experiment to fly on a Chinese space mission.
