According to Ibn Rushd of Cordoba, God commands Muslims to study creation. So I thought this news item might be of particular interest to Muslims.

After getting a spacecraft to orbit Mars in 1971, Venus in 1975, Jupiter in 1995 and Saturn in 2004, human engineers first got a spacecraft in the orbit of the planet Mercury this year. This is giving scientists access to a lot of new information.

There was a press conference yesterday with the first scientific results yesterday:
http://planetary.org/blog/article/00003067/
For more information and a bunch of detailed pictures of the surface of Mercury, see the website of the mission:
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/

Next month, another spacecraft should reach one of the largest asteroids between Mars and Jupiter and orbit it. This is also a first so expect more news later this year.
And next year, new robots should land on Mars and one of its moons.

For those unfamiliar with the state of exploration of the solar system, I recommend this beautiful TV series which is entertaining and which most people can understand:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qyxfb
Most of the things shown in this series were discovered recently but they also shows the sundial in the Great Mosque of Al-Qayrawan and mention the interest of Muslims in astornomy.

Nice.