The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicGradflex experiment, flown aboard the umanned Foton-M3 capsule in 2007 was about the fundamental science beneath mixing two liquids. Mixing is accompanied by large fluctuations consisting of localised motions that move the two liquids into each other. This effect occurs when liquids with different compositions diffuse into each other or even in a liquid subjected to a temperature difference that causes heat to diffuse. It was found that during the diffusion of tiny, nano-metre-sized molecules in a liquid, their concentration exhibits fluctuations with sizes ranging up to millimetres, and lifetimes as long as almost 17 minutes.The thickness of the fluid layer is in the end what limits any further growth of these fluctuations. The initial results were published on 19 April in the journal Nature Communications