The Geminid meteor shower is expected to reach its peak number of viewable meteors between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, December 13-14, 2011. However, there is a catch to the sighting of these meteors.

A team of astronomers have established two ways to rank planets and moons as to how similar they are to Earth and how likely they are to hold the essentials to produce life.

The surface of the planet Mercury is being explored by the NASA MESSENGER spacecraft. NASA just announced the space probe discovered strange “hollows”, with some small in size and others gigantic. How they got there is a puzzle to astronomers.

If you can wake up early on the morning of May 11, 2011, you’ll get an eye-awakening sight in the form of the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter all bunched together.

Fifty years ago, on May 5, 1961, NASA astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American to go into space. Shepard became a true American hero at a time when it looked like the United States was losing the race to explore space.

The U.S. space agency NASA released on Wednesday, March 30, 2011, the first orbital images of Mercury by its Messenger probe, after it entered orbit about the planet on March 17.

The NASA MESSENGER spacecraft has successfully done what no other spacecraft has ever done before, insert itself into orbit around the planet Mercury.

The NASA spacecraft MESSENGER has spent over 6.5 years traveling to the planet Mercury. On March 17, 2011, it will enter an orbit about Mercury, the first time any human-made probe has successfully done so in the history of space exploration.

The innermost planet of our solar system, Mercury, is now in a perfect place to see in the twilight of the evening. See it easily in your local night sky during the middle of March 2011.

Over the next few nights early in August 2010, sky watchers should be able to see the planets of Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Saturn in the western night sky. Don’t wait too long because Mercury soon disappears!