Our pick of the week's top aerospace and defense news, including Virgin Galactic's rocket engine breakthrough.

A paradigm shift is underway, whereby historical players from the old military-industrial complex are bound to become marginalized and lose out to the new players of the digital economy.

"A flawless six hour journey for the Progress 61 vehicle, every step of the way," said Rob Navias, NASA public affairs officer, from the agency's Mission Control, where Thursday's Russian Progress launch and docking were monitored.

Protecting planets in the search for life, and actually searching for it with humans, probably won’t mix.

NASA has a hard sell at the International Astronautical Congress with its focus on Mars.

The Mars ascent vehicle (MAV) will be very different from the ascent stage of the Apollo Lunar Module, the only craft ever to carry humans off the surface of another planetary body.

Given the success of the five-nation ISS partnership, the new director-general of the European Space Agency is hopeful any successor to the orbiting outpost will be founded on international cooperation. To this end, he has proposed a free-flying science lab that would continue ISS micro-gravity research in low Earth orbit while advancing technologies for orbital-debris mitigation. He has also floated a so-called “Moon Village” mission on the dark side of the lunar surface, offering the potential to further research and technology development in a low-gravity environment using humans, robots, or both.

Pentagon postures for a reality where satellites are threatened or even attacked.