No details about the spy satellite payload were revealed, but the NRO declared mission success in a statement.
Wang Yaping, Zhai Zhigang and Ye Guangfu were the second crew aboard Tiangong, China's newest orbital station.
Harvard researchers are 99.999% certain the object was interstellar. But their paper on the finding was being turned down, because the pair only had a private conversation with an anonymous U.S. government employee to confirm the accuracy of the data.
A third attempt to fuel NASA's SLS moon rocket in a practice countdown was derailed by technical snags.
The comet is bigger than Rhode Island and could be "as big as 85 miles across," according to NASA.
The mission commander and his three crewmates are plowing through a full slate of research and public outreach.
The test was delayed twice following a series of unrelated glitches.
The first non-government, privately-funded crew docked at space station Saturday for NASA-sanctioned research.
SpaceX and Axiom Space launched their first all-private joint mission to the International Space Station on Friday. NASA approved the mission, which is known as Axiom 1. CBS News' Michelle Miller and Mola Lenghi discussed the historic launch with Jared Isaacman, the founder and CEO of the payment processing company Shift4 who also commanded Inspiration4, a privately chartered spaceflight that launched in 2021.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Axiom-1 mission with a crew of four -- the first fully commercial crew to head to the International Space Station. Watch CBS News live coverage of the launch.
The Axiom-1 flight carries a crew of four private citizens, with a former NASA astronaut as mission commander.
The megamaser, named Nkalakatha, was discovered by the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa.
The flight is the first in a series sanctioned by NASA to encourage private-sector development in Earth orbit.
A successful fueling test is required before NASA's new moon rocket can take off on its maiden flight.
The flight is the first of up to two NASA-sanctioned "private astronaut missions" per year to space station.
