As 2010 comes to a close, the MESSENGER spacecraft is less than three months from becoming the first ever to enter orbit about Mercury. The coming year 2011 promises to be a historic one for the MESSENGER mission and for the exploration of the Solar System more generally. As we await turning the page on the calendar, let's look back at 12 image highlights from this year:

• January: Honoring Haitian Painter Benoit and American Photographer Lange
• February: Spectacular Color... with Better Yet to Come
• March: Rachmaninoff in Concert with Recently Named Craters on Mercury
• April: How Mercury's Copland Received Its Name
• May: Painting a Wave of Rays
• June: The Complex Geology of Geddes Crater
• July: Debussy and Its Hundreds of Miles of Rays
• August: Earth and Moon from 114 Million Miles
• September: Young Volcanism on Mercury
• October: Looking Toward Mercury's Horizon
• November: Mercury's Vast Expanses of Smooth Plains
• December: The Impressive Rays of Hokusai

These images are from MESSENGER, a NASA Discovery mission to conduct the first orbital study of the innermost planet, Mercury. For information regarding the use of images, see the MESSENGER image use policy.