NASAs Messenger spacecraft is now in orbit around Mercury and has returned the first image of the planet. Altogether some 360 + images have been taken by NASA and these will be released later in the week. See www.sciencenews.org/view/genric/id/71951/title/First_portrait_of_Mercury…
At www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-100&cid=release-2011-100 there is a story about the asteroid Vesta – is it a small planet? There are in fact 540<0000 minor planets in the Solar System and Vesta is one of them - but NASAs Dawn spacecraft is about to relay images of this rock in the sky that is 330 miles across (see also www.nasa.gov/dawn or http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov