SpaceX’s planned pad abort test for the Crew Dragon vehicle appears to be staying on track for May 6 following a successful ground firing of thrusters at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral.

"Coffee: the finest organic suspension ever devised," according to European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.

Our roundup of some of this week’s top stories in aerospace and defense.

A camera aboard NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has started generating tantalizing views of Pluto rotating on its sharply tilted axis, presenting patches of bright and dark material as it spins around a pole that appears to be covered with a cap of ice.

Amid a growing consensus in the U.S. government that space assets – commercial, civil or defense – are no longer safe in orbit, the U.S. Air Force and six top commercial operators are establishing a first-of-a-kind pilot program to improve data exchange among them.

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.