{"id":202124,"date":"2025-10-10T07:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T07:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/202124\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T07:26:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T07:26:09","slug":"she-saw-a-car-sized-object-above-a-texas-farm-and-found-a-wayward-hunk-of-nasa-equipment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/202124\/","title":{"rendered":"She saw a car-sized object above a Texas farm and found a wayward hunk of NASA equipment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">When Ann Walter looked outside her rural West Texas home, she didn&#8217;t know what to make of the bulky object slowly drifting across the sky.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">She was even more surprised to see what actually landed in her neighbor&#8217;s wheat field: a boxy piece of scientific equipment about the size of a sport-utility vehicle, attached to a massive parachute, adorned with NASA stickers. She called the local sheriff&#8217;s office and learned that NASA, indeed, was looking for a piece of equipment that had gone lost.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cIt&#8217;s crazy, because when you&#8217;re standing on the ground and see something in the air, you don&#8217;t realize how big it is,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was probably a 30-foot parachute. It was huge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Walter said she soon got a call from NASA&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.csbf.nasa.gov\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility<\/a>, which launches large unmanned, high altitude research balloons more than 20 miles into the atmosphere to conduct scientific experiments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Officials at NASA, which is impacted by the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/government-shutdown\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:ongoing government shutdown;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">ongoing government shutdown<\/a>, did not return messages Thursday. A message left with the balloon facility also was not immediately returned.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/scientificballoons\/launchschedule\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:launch schedule;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">launch schedule<\/a> on the balloon facility&#8217;s website shows a series of launches from Fort Sumner, New Mexico, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) west of where the equipment landed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Hale County Sheriff David Cochran confirmed that NASA officials called his office last week in search of the equipment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Walter said she ultimately spoke with someone at the balloon facility who told her it had been launched a day earlier from Fort Sumner, and uses telescopes to gather information about stars, galaxies and black holes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cThe researchers came out with a truck and trailer they used to pick it up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">But not before Walter and her family, who live in Edmonson, Texas, were able to capture some photos and videos.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cIt&#8217;s kind of surreal that it happened to us and that I was part of it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was a very cool experience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Ann Walter looked outside her rural West Texas home, she didn&#8217;t know what to make of the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[99408,49,48,99407,90811,307,66,79546,306,48720],"class_list":{"0":"post-202124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ann-walter","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-columbia-scientific-balloon-facility","12":"tag-government-shutdown","13":"tag-nasa","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-scientific-equipment","16":"tag-space","17":"tag-west-texas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}