This past week, Uber reportedly signed a deal with NASA to partner on developing a system for its ride-sharing flying car project. Called Uber Elevate, the service hopes to take taxis to a whole new level, and begin testing as early as 2020 in Los Angeles, Dubai and Dallas-Fort Worth.

At the Web Summit tech conference, Uber announced that it signed a Space Act Agreement to develop “unmanned aircraft management.” NASA’s deal spans four phases, in which Uber will become involved during the fourth.

The phases are outlined as follows:

Phase 1: U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) field-testing of drone for agriculture, pipeline monitoring and firefighting (completed in 2015)
Phase 2: long distance in remote locations (completed in 2016)
Phase 3: test services over moderately populated areas (expected in 2018)
Phase 4: testing in high-density urban environments (expected in 2019)

Uber wants to launch the sky-high intra-city services by 2023, and is proactively getting an early start by working with regulatory agencies to make their dream a reality.

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