{"id":216329,"date":"2025-10-11T08:13:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T08:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/216329\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T08:13:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T08:13:07","slug":"texas-woman-ann-walter-surprised-as-lost-hunk-of-nasa-equipment-lands-on-her-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/216329\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas woman Ann Walter surprised as lost hunk of NASA equipment lands on her farm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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>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.<\/p>\n<p>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>Ann Walter stands in front of the NASA research equipment that fell from the sky near her home in Edmonson, Texas, on Oct. 2, 2025. AP<\/p>\n<p>\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>Walter said she soon got a call from NASA\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.csbf.nasa.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">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>Officials at NASA, which is impacted by the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/10\/11\/us-news\/shutdown-layoffs-affecting-more-than-4000-federal-workers-begin\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ongoing government shutdown,<\/a> did not return messages Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>A message left with the balloon facility also was not immediately returned.<\/p>\n<p>A\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/scientificballoons\/launchschedule\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">launch schedule<\/a>\u00a0on the balloon facility\u2019s website shows a series of launches from Fort Sumner, New Mexico, about 140 miles west of where the equipment landed.<\/p>\n<p>The equipment: a boxy piece of scientific equipment about the size of a sport-utility vehicle, attached to a massive parachute, was adorned with NASA stickers. AP<\/p>\n<p>Ann Walter and her husband, Hayden, stand by the NASA equipment on their neighbor\u2019s wheat farm. AP<\/p>\n<p>Hale County Sheriff David Cochran confirmed that NASA officials called his office last week in search of the equipment.<\/p>\n<p>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>\u201cThe researchers came out with a truck and trailer they used to pick it up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>But not before Walter and her family, who live in Edmonson, Texas, were able to capture some photos and videos.<\/p>\n<p>\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&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[96680,718,79,193,1022,194],"class_list":["post-216329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-farms","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space","tag-texas","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}