Photos: Delta 4-Heavy launch gallery

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.

Less than six months from a historic close-up of Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft has glimpsed its distant target at a range of 126 million miles, and better pictures are coming.

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden speaks to Spaceflight Now’s Stephen Clark about the upcoming test flight of the Orion space capsule on the EFT-1 mission.