The Mars Rover Opportunity has now been operational on the red planet for almost ten years and is still going strong. The rover Spirit was launched on June 10  in 2003 and Opportunity soon followed on July 7. They finally reached Mars in 2004 and while Spirit shut down operations after the forth Martian Winter it faced in 2010, Opportunity is currently moving to a new area to study.

The new region is called Solander Point and will be like walking up to a road cut where you see a cross section of the rock layers. Scientists associated with the project are excited about the learning opportunity that this will provide. The main thing right now is to get Opportunity there.

After landing inside the Gale Crater on Mars last year Curiosity has been constantly on the move and in the news. The rover has been working for six months in an area the size of a small football field but is now moving away to the base of Mount Sharp. Three additional targets have been chosen for observation on the way there.

While no more rock drilling or soil scooping is planned for the mobile science laboratory, the rover will continue to explore the area around it as it moves to its next destination 8 kilometers away. This is one science project that has more than met its goals.

If you are asked to describe our planet as it is seen from space we are likely to say that its a large blue colored ball. This observation is drawn from the fact that almost all the photographs that have been taken of the planet Earth in space so far have been from close by celestial bodies like the moon or the International Space Station.

The many different satellites have also given us huge snapshots of the planet that we call home. Now this common picture is going to get a new perspective. One that is many million miles away and will show our planet to be a little dot in the larger scheme of things in the solar system.

The Cassini probe is to take photographs of Earth from its current location near Saturn and this in turn will allow scientists to see what our planet looks like in deep space. The spacecraft Cassini has been exploring Saturn 898 million miles away and now will allow us to see how Earth appears from its location.

The photographs will be taken on July 19, 2013 when the spacecraft moves in to a favorable position. It will show Earth as a tiny blue dot within the huge multi -hued rings of Saturn. Talk about a science project putting you in your place!

The electrical power supply of any city is usually associated with a gigantic power grid. This may no longer be the case if the new battery unveiled in Oregon has any say in the matter.  The 5-megawatt, lithium-ion energy storage system has been developed by Portland General Electric. The battery is a result of a five year research project that began back in 2010.

The energy storage facility is part of PGE’s contribution to the Battelle-led Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project. It is a highly innovative project demonstrating transactive energy management, which is a promising, cost-effective way to integrate variable renewable energy, energy storage and demand response at scale, said Patricia Hoffman, assistant secretary for DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability.

Essentially the battery is part of a micro grid which is part of a highly reliable, localized power zone that will supply power to nearly 500 customers in the area. It will also work as a power reserve during electricity disruptions such as blackouts caused by unknown reasons.

PGE is testing several smart-grid technologies in the Salem area and hopes that its innovative new battery will allow future power grids to be smaller in size. The impact of this science project is likely to have a large footprint in the electrical power supply industry.

When you think of a traditional battery cell you think in terms of metals and not in terms of wood. This may soon change as the scientists at the University of Maryland prove to the scientific community that wood is actually an ideal material to build a battery with.

Liangbing Hu, Teng Li and their team of researchers at the University of Maryland experienced during their experiments that wood fibers are supple enough to let their sodium-ion battery last more than 400 charging cycles. This puts it the list of longest lasting nano batteries.

Wood fibers that make up a tree once held mineral-rich water, and so are ideal for storing liquid electrolytes, making them not only the base but an active part of the battery, said Hu. Despite charging and discharging hundreds of times the wood remained intact, although it did get wrinkled up.

Pushing sodium ions through tin anodes often weaken the tin’s connection to its base material,but the wood fibers are soft enough to serve as a mechanical buffer, and thus can accommodate tin’s changes. This is the key to our long-lasting sodium-ion batteries, said Li. This is one science project to watch out for in the future.

No matter what gadget you favor they all have one essential drawback – the batteries eventually will run out and you will need to recharge them. This is the reason why the subject of batteries has been the focus of many scientific research projects. Some of these are fairly interesting as we will find out here.

There is a purse that allows ladies to recharge their cellphones on the go. It has a pocket lined with special material that allows the phone to recharge. In 3-D printing you have a prototype of a small battery that can literally be printed out and used to supply electricity to tiny devices. These lithium-ion micro batteries could spearhead a major revolution in medical care.

Did you ever think wood could be converted in to battery? Apparently it can be done say researchers at the University of Maryland who have coated a thin sliver of wood with tin to produce an economic and eco friendly battery. This one’s still in the testing stage, but it promises to give a major boost to solar power usage.

The researchers are working out a way to recharge this wooden battery using the most abundant natural resource we have, the power of the yellow sun in the sky. Perhaps you can come up with an interesting science project on how to charge your batteries in an innovative manner.