2014 is ending, and here's hope that 2015 will bring better news for humanity.

On the whole, this was not the greatest year for our species. The greatest geo-political confrontation that comes to mind is the worsening Ukrainian crisis and the renewal of the Cold War rivalry. Though the lives lost in this crisis are not many compared to those lost in the other flashpoints in the Middle East, it is definitely the most significant clash. It is the first forced border change and territorial annexation in mainland Europe since World War II, it broke down the post-Cold war order established after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it renewed the rivalry between two of the largest nuclear powers in the world and it threatens to turn into a permanent East-West fault line now that Ukraine is taking about joining NATO.

Similarly, the Syrian Civil War morphed into a deadly multi-power conflict with the Islamic State battling Iraq and Syria as the United States-led western coalition, Iran and the Gulf Arab states all take different sides and support their own proxies. The medieval, barbaric brutality of the largest religious war and genocide of this nascent century has shocked anyone with a sense of dignity as the death toll continues to climb to a staggering, unforgivable number.

In Africa, a large part of the continent was cursed with the Ebola epidemic, which showed just how wide the gap between different countries is even when comparing basic medical necessities. Ebola is being contained and defeated in the face of enormous odds not by divine intervention but by the sweat and toil heroic of individuals who were duly recognized collectively by Time magazine as the "person of the year." In other situations, however, the continent has continued to fail miserably, with increasing sectarian violence and massive economic mismanagement.

However, one global phenomenon stood out, even amongst such morbid tales. The space race has arguably been renewed, and it was a phenomenal year for space research.

It started when NASA's MAVEN craft joined the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers on Mars, probing further into the advisability of colonization of the Red Planet. The fascinating discovery of ice and methane in the Martian atmosphere raised hopes of finding living primitive or extreme life forms on the planet. India's ISRO Mars Orbiter Mission made India the first country in the entire world to successfully complete a Mars mission on its first try. The country topped this achievement with a successful test flight of a manned module which will be used for manned lunar and space flight. Not to be outdone, China successfully sent a lunar probe on a flyby of the moon, firmly propelling the Asian giant towards the goal of a manned moon mission. China also displayed its own Mars Rover design and ramped up the construction of a large space station rivaling the ISS in addition to advancing other plans for complex robotic and human missions to the moon and Mars. The final act of brilliance among these extraordinary feats of human achievement happened when the European Space Agency finally landed a craft on a moving comet billions of miles away from Earth.

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