Video: Antares rocket explodes

Facing pressure to find a ride into space for its commercial Cygnus cargo craft in the wake of a catastrophic rocket failure, Orbital Sciences Corp. says it has found openings in the mission manifests of the world’s busiest launch operators to accommodate resupply flights to the International Space Station next year.

A sequence of images from the NASA TV broadcast of the ill-fated launch of the Antares rocket.

The year ended with a deluge of big news, reminding us of the risks of spaceflight and the thin margins between success and failure on the final frontier. 2014 was also a year of breakthroughs in the exploration of the solar system and the future of human spaceflight.