Tuesday

A Japanese “flying car” has successfully made its first test flight

Companies around the world are racing to be the first to launch self-flying vehicles.
The news: Japanese electronics giant NEC tested a drone-like prototype yesterday inside a cage at one of its facilities in Abiko, Japan. It hovered about 3 meters (10 feet) above the ground for a minute. It didn’t have any passengers on board and was powered by a battery, Bloomberg reports. NEC engineers spent about a year developing the model, which weighs about 150 kilograms (331 pounds) and is 3.9 meters (12.7 feet) long.
What do we call it? “Flying car” is a bit of a misleading name, given that it can’t go from driving on roads to flying. It’s basically a large drone, with four propellers, that can carry people.
Japan’s grand ambition: Japan’s government is hoping to position the country as a leader in the flying car not-quite-as-large-as-a-helicopter drone space. Its “road map” document says it plans to ship goods this way by 2023 and let people ride in the vehicles in its (very densely populated) cities by the 2030s.
One of many: A number of companies, including BoeingAirbus, and Uber, are working on autonomous flying. It’s not quite clear who the target market is yet, though, beyond the super-wealthy, not to mention whether driverless “flying” taxis will be economically viable

Thursday

A Japanese spacecraft just grabbed more rocks from the asteroid Ryugu

Hayabusa2 has collected a second sample from the asteroid's surface that could give us an insight into how the early solar system was formed.

The procedure: After a few hours of maneuvering, the spacecraft touched down on Ryugu’s surface at 9.15pm EDT yesterday. It then fired a bullet into the asteroid and collected some of the debris stirred up by the shot.
Next steps: Hayabusa2 is scheduled to depart for Earth at the end of this year, but before it does it has a final task: deploying a smaller rover called MINERVA-II2 later this summer. Its primary goal will be to explore in an environment where there is very little gravity.
Long game: Ancient asteroids like Ryugu provide clues about the formation of the early solar system (including our own planet,) which makes the samples Hayabusa2 has collected so important. Labs on Earth will be able to start analyzing its cargo once it finally arrives home towards the end of 2020.