The last 12 months have been liberally sprinkled with discoveries and disasters, spacesuits and lawsuits, and heaps of premium space porn. Here are our picks for the biggest space stories of the year—the good, the bad, and the pyrotechnic. 2016 sure has a lot to live up to.

10. Mercury lost a friend, and Venus gained one.

There has been so much talk about outer Solar System discoveries over the past year that it can be easy to overlook the exploration of the inner Solar System. To that point, on April 30, Mercury lost its first and only orbiter, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, when it crashed into the planet after completing its productive 11-year mission. Rest in pieces, humble friend.

On the flipside, Venus welcomed its new orbiter, the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft, on December 7. This feat was a long time coming, as Akatsuki originally arrived at Venus in December 2010, but failed to enter the planet's orbit. After that, the spacecraft wandered off to orbit the Sun for a few years, until the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) aced its second chance to gravitationally tether itself to Venus earlier this month.