A day before NOAA was due on Capitol Hill for a progress report about its two main weather satellite programs, an agency official on Dec. 9 shed new light on component snafus that prompted a six-month launch delay for its next coastal-watchdog satellite.
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.
