Japan's H3 Rocket No. 9 put the Michibiki No. 7 satellite into orbit on August 11, 2026, the first operational payload since the No. 8 failure. The seven-satellite goal now waits on fiscal 2031.
A rock punched through a New Jersey ceiling on July 16, 2024. The homeowner sealed the pieces in jars within minutes, letting a team with the Institute of Science Tokyo and JAMSTEC read traces of ancient asteroid brine.
Japanese researchers held 1.58 tesla inside a 20 mm model in a 7 km/s hypersonic flow, about 2.1 times what a comparable neodymium magnet gives. Heat flux itself, though, was not among the measurements.
NAOJ puts NINJA on the Subaru Telescope this summer, a spectrograph that grabs 0.85 to 2.5 micrometers in one exposure. Why Japan bet on follow-up, not discovery.
From mid-August 2026 SoftBank will fly a 65-metre helium airship from New Mexico across the Pacific and hold it about 20 km above Japan, testing voice, SMS and data from a flying base station that covers up to 200 km across. Commercial service is targeted from 2027. Here is how it differs from satellite direct-to-phone, why Loon died, and the business problem SoftBank has not solved.
LEAF, a deorbit device that drags dead small satellites out of orbit, was finished by space startup cosmobloom and Katsuragawa Seira, a Tokyo screw maker in business since 1938. How a town factory's eye ended up on a film thinner than kitchen wrap.
Kushiro Airport in Hokkaido is the first in Japan to fully deploy WOLF-GUARD, a self-driving version of the famous Monster Wolf robot. In trials, the Monster Wolf cut small-animal intrusions by about 60 percent. Here's how the red-eyed, howling patroller works, and how it compares with the falcons, border collies and radar used at airports abroad.
NYK Line, Japan's largest shipping company, is working with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to catch reusable rocket boosters on a ship at sea. The idea began in an in-house training program, became the first shipping-company project selected for JAXA's Space Strategy Fund, and now faces a question NYK's own engineers raise: will anyone launch often enough to make it pay?
Bridgestone's airless AirFree tire is now in permanent service on an autonomous shuttle in Higashiomi, Shiga, a national first. How its puncture-proof resin-spoke design works, why driverless and MaaS fleets need it, how it contrasts with Michelin's Uptis strategy, and whether it's really Moon-bound.
On July 5, Hayabusa2 passed 800 meters from asteroid Torifune at 5 km/s, its first major win since 2020. A look at why Japan keeps flying a retired probe, the road to 1998 KY26, and how it compares to NASA's OSIRIS-APEX.
Japan, the UK and Italy's GCAP fighter demonstrator is 75% built, and reporters have finally seen it. A third longer than a Typhoon, with weapons bays reportedly double the F-35's capacity, its sheer size reveals the program's priorities: range and payload for the Pacific. How it compares to America's F-47 and Europe's collapsed FCAS.