The triumph and tragedy of space flight, manned and unmanned, have been on full view over the past year. The tragedy occurred on the inner fringe of space with the crash of SpaceShipTwo, Richard Branson’s space tourism vehicle, at the end of October. The most notable triumph was the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission which first achieved a rendezvous with a comet half a billion kilometres from Earth and then landed a robotic probe on the comet’s surface, in an operation that caught the public imagination the world over.

We can look forward to more drama in 2015, not least from Rosetta which aims to keep pace with Comet 67P as it swoops round the sun, developing a tail of dust and vapour; and hope remains that its Philae probe will come to life as brighter light recharges its solar batteries. The outstanding US contribution to space exploration next year will be the New Horizons mission, which will reach the frozen outermost reaches of the solar system, observing Pluto close up for the first time and no doubt discovering previously unknown astronomical bodies.

Less newsworthy but with direct human interest is the routine ferrying of people to and from the International Space Station, a duty performed entirely by Russian rockets now that the US is in a hiatus between decommissioning the old Shuttle Fleet and the introduction of successor vehicles.