A US government agency claims it has battery technology that could outdo anything dreamt up by the likes of Bill Gates and Elon Musk. Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) – a branch of the Department of Energy – says it has several next-generation battery storage projects in the works. While the organisation won't go into details about its technology, it says it has found the'holy grail of batteries' could transform the US electrical grid within five to 10 years. Ellen Williams (right), director of Arpa-E, said her agency has helped kickstart a dozen high-risk projects based on newer technologies that could soon outperform Elon Musk's (left) Tesla batteries The battery division of Musk's Tesla Motors turned a profit in the fourth quarter. This came after the first shipments of its rechargeable products helped to reduce losses from the company's auto business.

Nasa is shooting for a 2018 launch of the Mars Insight spacecraft which will examine the interior of the red planet. The robotic lander was supposed to lift off this month, but was grounded in December by a leak in a French instrument. It will now be completely redesigned in time for May 2018, the next available launch window. A French-made seismographic instrument destined for Nasa's InSight Mars mission lander (artist's impression pictured) was found to have leaks in its vacuum container. The mission, aimed at studying Mars' interior structure by monitoring its'marsquakes', has now been scrapped The lander, which is about the size of a car, was supposed to be the first mission devoted to understanding the interior structure of the red planet.

The lifetime tenure of each of the U.S. Supreme Court's nine justices means they have long-lasting influences on the country's affairs. How a justice votes in a case is a reflection of his or her judicial temperament, personal philosophy and political ideology. Political scientists, lawyers, constitutional scholars and laymen alike closely watch the court. Virginia Tech designed a'data-driven framework' that learns justices' judicial preference and voting behaviors. Named Supreme Court Ideal Point Miner, it is 79% accurate.

Nasa received a special visitor this week from a galaxy far, far away, and their spherical guest was right at home with the agency's space robots. BB-8 paid a visit to Nasa's Jet Propulsion Lab where it posed for selfies and learned about Earth robots and the journey to Mars. The droid's fieldtrip was revealed on the space agency's Twitter page, and it can be seen in numerous face-to-face interactions with Nasa technologies. Nasa received a special visitor this week from a galaxy far, far away, and their spherical guest was right at home with the agency's space robots R2-D2 always had C-3PO by his side to offer many words of wisdom; now, his successor BB-8 may be scoping out a companion of his own. In the humorous photos released by Nasa, BB-8 can even be seen wearing its own guest pass.

Google has revealed that its self driving car hit a bus because it made an incorrect assumption about where it would go. The firm admitted the crash would not be its last - while humans were allowed on the roads. 'Our car was making an assumption about what the other car was going to do,' said Chris Urmson, head of Google's self-driving project, speaking at the SXSW festival in Austin. Google has revealed that its self driving car hit a bus because it made an incorrect assumption about where it would go. Neither the Google employee in the driver's seat -- who must be there under California law to take the wheel in an emergency -- nor the 16 people on the bus were injured. The transit agency has concluded based on the footage that the bus driver was not responsible, spokeswoman Stacey Hendler Ross said.

China has plans to build a new space telescope that could outperform Hubble. According to reports, the new telescope will be similar to Hubble, but will have a field of view that is 300 times larger. It is expected to capture 40 per cent of space, with the same precision as Nasa's telescope, within ten years. China has plans to build a new space telescope which could outperform Hubble. The new telescope, which has not been named yet, will have the ability to dock with China's modular space station the Tiangong-3, expected to launch in 2020.

Military forces around the world have been looking into'invisibility' techniques to keep personnel and equipment discrete. Stealth bombers can go almost entirely undetected by enemy radar, and'metamaterials' aim to make uniforms near invisible. But now, leading military lawyer Bill Boothby has cautioned that some of these tactics may be in violation of international humanitarian laws revised after World War II. Stealth bombers like the B-2 pictured above can go almost entirely undetected by enemy radar, and'metamaterials' aim to make uniforms near invisible. Deceptive camouflage techniques may be prohibited under a clause called'prohibition of perfidy,' if they are used to trick an enemy as a means to cause death.

Self-driving cars are'absolutely not' ready for widespread deployment despite a rush to put them on the road, a robotics expert has told Congress. The cars aren't yet able to handle bad weather, including standing water, drizzling rain, sudden downpours and snow, Missy Cummings, director of Duke University's robotics program, told the Senate commerce committee. And they certainly aren't equipped to follow the directions of a police officer, she said. The head of Alphabet's Google self-driving car programme will urge the U.S. Congress on Tuesday to grant new authority to speed the introduction of self-driving cars on American roads. In January, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it may waive some vehicle safety rules to allow more driverless cars to operate on U.S. roads as part of a broader effort to speed up development of self-driving vehicles. NHTSA said Friday in a report there are significant legal hurdles to allowing fully autonomous vehicles without steering wheels.

A highly secretive Pentagon organization is experimenting with'micro-drones' which could one day take to the sky like a like a swarm of robotic locusts. The experiments led by the Strategic Capabilities Office were conducted in Alaska last summer, according to The Washington Post, during which the tiny drones were launched from fighter jets. After launch, the 3-D printed micro-drones break free of a canister and seek each other out to create a swarm. The micro-drones have inch-wide propellers, and can be launched from the flare dispensers of F-16 and F/A-18 fighter jets. After launch, they descend in a parachute-equipped canister and then break free.

Robot Wars will soon back on TV in the UK, and a very similar battle is heading for the country's seas. The British Royal Navy will be holding a demonstration of unmanned technology off the coast of Scotland this autumn. The machines will compete in their very own version of'robot wars' to demonstrate they could be part of the Navy's future. The Royal Navy will be holding a demonstration of unmanned technology off the coast of Scotland this autumn. The'Unmanned Warior 2016' will feature vehicles that fly along with those that move across the surface, or under water.