A Japanese Spacecraft is Closing in on a Mineable Asteroid

Is humanity on its way to mining asteroids?Last week, we told you about Made in Space, the California company manufacturing ultra-high-quality fiber optics and more aboard the International Space Station. As deliriously ambitious as their mission of making humans "multiplanetary" sounds, they're not the only ones chasing big dreams among the stars: JAXA, the Japanese Space Exploration Agency, seems to be laying the foundation for an equally sci-fi-sounding goal: asteroid mining.The name of their...