NASA’s MESSENGER probe has reached its destination and went into orbit around Mercury on March 17, 2011. It is the first spacecraft to orbit the planet closest to the sun.

NASA’s Stardust spacecraft is traveling at a speed of 590,000 miles a day (24,583.3 miles per hour) to keep its scheduled rendezvous to make a close pass by comet Tempel 1 on Valentine’s Day, at a

NASA future missions scheduled for 2011 include: Space Shuttles Discovery in February for mission STS-133 and Endeavour in April on mission STS-134, the last Space Shuttle flight; GLORY in February to

The 10th anniversary of the International Charter “Space and Major Disasters” occurred in October.

Japanese space probe Hayabusa returned to Earth after a 7-year mission to collect samples of Comet 25143 Itokawa in 2005. The capsule from the probe landed in the Australian Outback on June 13th.

NASA’s rover Spirit has been on Mars for 6 years, since January 2004. It’s traveled just under 5 miles and has sent back many, many images of the surface of Mars.

In February, two Earth-orbiting satellites collided by accident. It’s the first time that two intact spacecraft ran into each other. The Russian Cosmos 2251 satellite slammed into U.S.

April has a wide range of satellite launches scheduled for many different purposes. To see a worldwide launch schedule, go to www.spaceflightnow.com/tracking/.

NASA is looking for a name for its new car-sized rover that will be launched on a mission to Mars in 2009.

NASA is launching the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) no earlier than June 3rd.