{"id":1486,"date":"2025-10-14T00:27:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T00:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/1486\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T00:27:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T00:27:08","slug":"woman-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\/us-tx\/1486\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman saw a car-sized object above a Texas farm and found a wayward hunk of NASA equipment\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">(AP) &#8211; When Ann Walter looked outside her rural West Texas home, she didn\u2019t know what to make of the bulky object slowly drifting across the sky.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">She was even more surprised to see what actually landed in her neighbor\u2019s 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\u2019s office and learned that NASA, indeed, was looking for a piece of equipment that had gone lost.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cIt\u2019s crazy, because when you\u2019re standing on the ground and see something in the air, you don\u2019t realize how big it is,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was probably a 30-foot parachute. It was huge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Walter said she soon got a call from NASA\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.csbf.nasa.gov\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">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=\"text | text-start article-text\">Officials at NASA, which is impacted by the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/government-shutdown\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">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=\"text | text-start article-text\">A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/scientificballoons\/launchschedule\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">launch schedule<\/a> on the balloon facility\u2019s 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=\"text | article-text\">Hale County Sheriff David Cochran confirmed that NASA officials called his office last week in search of the equipment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">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=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThe researchers came out with a truck and trailer they used to pick it up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">But not before Walter and her family, who live in Edmonson, Texas, were able to capture some photos and videos.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cIt\u2019s 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<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(AP) &#8211; When Ann Walter looked outside her rural West Texas home, she didn\u2019t know what to make&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2102,2101,1911,2103,2100,27,29,28,375],"class_list":{"0":"post-1486","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-ann-walters","9":"tag-farm","10":"tag-nasa","11":"tag-parachute","12":"tag-space-equipment","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-texas-headlines","15":"tag-texas-news","16":"tag-west-texas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}