Video: Lander manager provides update on Philae status

Europe’s Philae lander radioed home Thursday, sending the first picture from the surface of a comet hours after a dramatic descent that apparently culminated in bouncing hundreds of meters across the distant world before coming to rest.

Just before settling to a soft crash landing Friday, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft captured close-range images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, peering into a stadium-sized pit and recording a final dataset to keep scientists busy long after the mission’s end.

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.