A pair of nanosatellites were deployed by the NanoRacks Launcher on the end of the Japanese robotic arm of the International Space Station on Friday. The tiny CubeSats are loaded with tools to observe the planet.
The supermassive black hole is 40 million times as massive as the sun and powers a quasar that existed 700 million years after the Big Bang.
The asteroid zoomed by Earth at a perfectly safe distance of around 1.8 million miles (2.9 kilometers).
Images show surprise changes to the spacecraft as it interacted with the atmosphere.
