SPACED OUT

Stunned Woman Finds Missing NASA Equipment in Surprise Location

The equipment is used for gathering images of black holes and stars.

A woman has revealed the “surreal” moment an SUV-sized hunk of NASA equipment landed in her neighbor’s wheat field. Ann Walter saw the “huge” hunk of research equipment floating downwards near her rural West Texas home in Edmonson. Above it was a parachute with NASA logos on it. “It’s crazy, because when you’re standing on the ground and see something in the air, you don’t realize how big it is,” she told the Associated Press. “It was probably a 30-foot parachute. It was huge.” When she called the county sheriff’s office, they told her NASA was looking for some misplaced equipment. Soon, a call arrived from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility. They confirmed it was theirs and said it had lifted off from 140 miles west, at Fort Sumner in New Mexico. “The researchers came out with a truck and trailer they used to pick it up,” she said. She told CBC, “It was very mysterious.” The researchers told her that the kit was used to gather “very clear pictures of stars, galaxies, black holes,” she said. “It’s kind of surreal that it happened to us and that I was part of it. It was a very cool experience,” she added.

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