{"id":1603,"date":"2025-10-14T01:30:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T01:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/1603\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T01:30:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T01:30:12","slug":"she-saw-a-car-sized-object-over-a-texas-farm-and-found-wayward-hunk-of-nasa-equipment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/1603\/","title":{"rendered":"She saw a car-sized object over a Texas farm and found wayward hunk of NASA equipment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">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=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">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=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">\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=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Walter said she soon got a call from NASA&#8217;s <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" 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=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Officials at NASA, which is impacted by the <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" 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=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">A <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/scientificballoons\/launchschedule\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">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=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Hale County Sheriff David Cochran confirmed that NASA officials called his office last week in search of the equipment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">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=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">\u201cThe researchers came out with a truck and trailer they used to pick it up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">But not before Walter and her family, who live in Edmonson, Texas, were able to capture some photos and videos.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">\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":1604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2222,2221,732,490,2220,2219,27,29,28,1499],"class_list":["post-1603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-2222","tag-aerospace-and-defense-industry","tag-article","tag-general-news","tag-science","tag-spacecraft","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603","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=1603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}