{"id":19151,"date":"2025-10-24T11:42:21","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/19151\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T11:42:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:42:21","slug":"nasas-lost-scientific-equipment-lands-in-west-texas-wheat-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/19151\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA’s lost scientific equipment lands in West Texas wheat field"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

\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

Walter said she soon got a call from NASA\u2019s 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

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

A 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

Hale County Sheriff David Cochran confirmed that 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 uses telescopes to gather information about stars, galaxies and black holes.<\/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\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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Ann Walter looked outside her rural West Texas home, she didn\u2019t know what to make of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2221,14652,14655,5578,490,14654,14653,2220,2219,27,29,28,1760,1499],"class_list":["post-19151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-aerospace-and-defense-industry","tag-ann-walter","tag-david-cochran","tag-domestic-news","tag-general-news","tag-jwd-evergreen","tag-national-aeronautics-and-space-administration","tag-science","tag-spacecraft","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-tx-state-wire","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19151","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=19151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}