An extra $5 billion set aside in the U.S. Air Force’s black and white budget plan for fiscal 2016 is largely dedicated to projects for shoring up and protecting space assets, says Air Force Lt. Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, military deputy to the service’s procurement czar.

Russia’s troubled Progress 59 cargo spacecraft is unable to dock with the International Space Station and will make an uncontrolled re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, U.S. and Russian flight controllers told the orbiting lab’s six-member crew on April 29..

New attempts to contact Russia's wayward Progress 59 cargo freighter en route to the International Space Station have so far been unsuccessful.

Progress 59 is scheduled to lift off from Baikonur on Tuesday at 3:09 a.m., EDT, initiating a four orbit, six hour sprint to the International Space Station with three tons of supplies

Our roundup of the top stories in aerospace and defense from the last two weeks.

"We definitely look forward to the espresso machine," astronaut Scott Kelly, NASA's ISS marathoner, told Russia Today. "I know a lot of people are interested in it."

India’s second lunar exploration mission – Chandrayaan-2, to be launched during the next two to three years – will be completely indigenous, the country’s top scientist says.

Although investigators appear to be in broad agreement that wear in the bearings of the main engine turbopump is the “most probable” cause of the explosion that destroyed an Orbital ATK Antares launch vehicle on a crew resupply mission to the International Space Station last October, questions remain over what caused the wear in the first place.