How Is Airbus Planning to Halve Testing Time Without Cutting the Evidence? Hybrid aircraft testing is moving from research programmes into mainstream development. Airbus wants to halve testing lead times on its A320 successor. It plans to do this by combining physical and virtual assessment far more closely. Thierry Raffy, Airbus’s vice president of test
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Can a 110-Metre Blade Be Built to Last 25 Years and Still Come Apart Cleanly? Recyclable wind blades have just taken a big step in scale. In late September, CRRC announced a 110-metre blade designed to be taken apart and recycled. The company says it recovers over 95% of the key raw materials. Meanwhile, the
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Can AI Rebuild a CAD Model, and Does It Understand Why It Was Built That Way? AI CAD modelling has taken a visible step forward in recent weeks. SOLIDWORKS previewed AI this summer that turns imported STEP and IGES files into editable, feature-based parts. Then, in September, Autodesk showed a very similar idea for Fusion.
How Do Engineers Build a Telescope Inside a Kilometre of Antarctic Ice? On 6 October 2026, the Nobel Prize in Physics went to Francis Halzen. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recognised his work on the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. This observatory is a cubic kilometre of Antarctic ice fitted with light sensors. Furthermore, the Nobel
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What Should Design Engineers Look For in Coventry This Week? The Engineering Design Show 2026 opens tomorrow at Coventry Building Society Arena. It runs on 7 and 8 October. The UK’s leading event for design engineers brings mechanical, electronic and embedded design under one roof. More than 200 exhibitors are taking part, and organisers expect
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How Have Engineers Made One of the Most Brittle Materials in Existence Bend Without Breaking? Materials engineers have a long-standing problem. The strongest materials are usually the most brittle. Push them too far and they shatter rather than bend. Engineers at Purdue University have now overcome that trade-off in a material long considered too fragile
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What Does It Actually Take to Build a Robot Capable of Battlefield Operation? At the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing last month, robots sprinted, boxed and danced. Some covered 100 metres faster than Usain Bolt. Crowds cheered the stumbles as much as the successes. Two days after the Games ended, the People’s Liberation Army’s
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How Did a British Startup Take a Jet Engine from Concept to Flight in Under Seven Months? On 15th September 2026, the Ministry of Defence announced one of the most significant achievements in British propulsion engineering in recent memory. Working with Oxford-based startup Alloyed, the MOD’s Strategic Capabilities Office took a new turbojet engine from
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What Does It Take to Build a Telescope That Sees a Billion Galaxies? On 30th August 2026, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. On board sat one of the most precisely engineered scientific instruments ever built. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope separated from the launch
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What Does the Latest UK Manufacturing Report Tell Us About the State of British Engineering? British manufacturing is resilient. That is the headline finding from MHA’s 2026 Manufacturing and Engineering Report — the most comprehensive annual survey of UK and Irish manufacturing businesses. It covers over 1,000 C-suite executives across the sector. However, resilience is
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