{"id":69021,"date":"2025-10-10T01:51:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T01:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/69021\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T01:51:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T01:51:12","slug":"giant-chunk-of-nasa-equipment-lands-on-texas-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/69021\/","title":{"rendered":"Giant chunk of NASA equipment lands on Texas farm"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Ann Walter looked outside her rural West Texas home, she didn’t know what to make of the bulky object slowly drifting across the sky.<\/p>\n

She was even more surprised to see what actually landed in her neighbour’s wheat field \u2013 a boxy piece of scientific equipment about the size of a sport-utility vehicle, attached to a massive parachute, adorned with NASA stickers. <\/p>\n

She called the local sheriff’s office and learned that NASA, indeed, was looking for a piece of equipment that the agency had lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s crazy, because when you’re standing on the ground and see something in the air, you don’t realise how big it is,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was probably a 30-foot parachute. It was huge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walter said she soon got a call from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, which launched large unmanned, high altitude research balloons more than 32km into the atmosphere to conduct scientific experiments.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/p>\n

In this photo provided by Ann Walter, labels are seen on a piece of NASA research equipment that Ann Walter says fell from the sky near her home in Edmonson, Texas. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Officials at NASA, which was impacted by the ongoing government shutdown, did not return messages. A message left with the balloon facility also was not immediately returned.<\/p>\n

A launch schedule on the balloon facility’s website showed a series of launches from Fort Sumner, New Mexico, about 225km west of where the equipment landed.<\/p>\n

Hale County Sheriff David Cochran confirmed NASA officials called his office last week in search of the equipment.<\/p>\n

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 used telescopes to gather information about stars, galaxies and black holes.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/p>\n

In this photo provided by Ann Walter, Ann Walter stands in front of a piece of NASA research equipment attached to a parachute that fell from the sky near her home in Edmonson, Texas. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe researchers came out with a truck and trailer they used to pick it up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But not before Walter and her family, who live in Edmonson, Texas, were able to capture some photos and videos.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’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’t know what to make of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,64,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-69021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north-america","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}