Your 5G iPhone is unlikely to appear until 2020, an asteroid mining company gets some help from a new Blockchain owner, and drones get smarter at search and rescue. It's a match made in 2018. Planetary Resources just took an unusual turn on its path to asteroid mining -- selling itself to a blockchain company founded by Ethereum's Joe Lubin. Planetary Resources' Brian Israel said that Blockchain was a "natural solution" for commerce in space and an ideal way for people from various countries to coordinate efforts. It also adds some crucial funding to the space mining company, which had recently laid off employees.

Japan just fulfilled a key part of its space ambitions -- and it'll have important ramifications for everything from self-driving cars to self-defense. The country has launched its fourth Michibiki satellite, which expands a "quasi-zenith" system designed to provide greater access to GPS in urban'canyons' where buildings tend to block signals from lower-orbit satellites. Needless to say, that's vital for autonomous vehicles that need GPS to get their bearings in a country dominated by sprawling cities. The military might want it, too. While Japan's armed forces are largely focused on defense, this fourth quasi-zenith satellite could help those calling on the nation to buy cruise missiles as a deterrent to North Korea.

Pieter Gillegot-Vergauwen, vice president of product management at the Map Production Unit of TomTom, the Amsterdam-based mapping company heavily involved in the development of self-driving cars, said digital mapping is one of keys to building autonomous vehicles.