Here's a roundup of the week's top drone news, designed to capture the military, commercial, non-profit, and recreational applications of unmanned aircraft.

A European mission to intercept and deflect an asteroid now has a target: asteroid Didymos. The proposed Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission couldn't have had better timing, sounding a call for proposals in the days before a huge meteorite exploded above northern Russia and an even larger chunk of space rock gave Earth a close shave.

Taking the "sport" out of "sport shooting" and the "man" out of "marksman," a company called TrackingPoint has developed what it calls "Intelligent Digital Tracking Scopes" for use on its "Precision Guided Firearms." The latter is something of a misnomer, as neither the munition itself nor the firearm is guided, but the shooter is - sort of. TrackingPoint's technology allows a shaky shooter to digitally tag a target through the optic, which then won't let the firearm discharge until it is lined up perfectly on the target.

In whatever sense that there's a "good" missile, this new one from Boeing seems like it. Rather than a missile that demolishes a target (along with everything nearby), countries have been clamoring for something more discreet: a weapon that knocks out the lights instead, crippling a target without collateral damage.

Precision guided weapons are usually the purview of larger weapons platforms, like naval vessels, combat aircraft, or assault vehicles. But a couple of Sandia National Labs engineers are bringing the guided munition down from the mountaintop and putting it into the hands of the average infantryman. The engineers have developed and patented a new breed of self-guided bullet that can navigate its way to a laser-designated target at ranges of more than a mile.

Clusters of islands poked through hot oceans 3.4 billion years ago, when the world still had no oxygen and the seas churned under a pallid, overcast sky. But life thrived on Earth even then, scientists say - and now they have the world's oldest fossils to prove it.