Agents rushed to a West Texas farm Thursday morning after a massive balloon from space crash-landed in a crop field.
The balloon, part of a NASA research mission, came down on farmland in Hale County near Edmonton, catching residents by surprise.
Residents Hayden and Ann Walter were among the first to spot the object, describing it as a large parachute-like balloon floating silently above their property.
Ann Walter called the Hale County Sheriff’s Office, which confirmed the object was part of an unmanned high-altitude NASA experiment.
‘They thanked me for informing them because a NASA team was already trying to locate and retrieve their equipment,’ she wrote on Facebook. ‘I was blown away by the comment.’
A team from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF), led by a man identified only as Garrison, quickly arrived at the farm to secure the balloon.
Walter said Garrison explained the purpose of the high-tech equipment: it ascends to the edge of the atmosphere, allowing telescopes to capture clearer images of stars, galaxies, and black holes.
She told Daily Mail that the crew arrived and quickly went to work, ‘packing everything up within an hour.’
The cause of the balloon’s sudden descent is unknown. The incident comes amid a government shutdown that has left many NASA offices empty, raising questions about how quickly such high-altitude missions can be monitored.
A local family ran to the crash site, finding damaged NASA equipment lying in the dirt
The family first spotted what they thought was a balloon soaring over the skies, but later learned it was a parachute
The balloon had carried its payload to roughly 120,000 feet, hovering high into Wednesday night while gathering critical scientific data for researchers in Lowell, New Mexico.
The unexpected landing turned a routine research mission into a dramatic event for the local community, who watched history quite literally fall from the sky.
The Daily Mail has contacted Walter for comment.
Walter recounted that her husband, Hayden, had stepped outside Thursday morning to start their truck when he shouted for her to come see something unusual.
‘I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what?’ Walter said. ‘We both saw this parachute-like balloon floating in the sky.’
The couple snapped photos and videos before returning to their morning routine, but Hayden soon realized the balloon had disappeared from view.
‘He said he believes it landed somewhere nearby,’ Walter added.
After contacting Garrison from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, Walter was able to inform him that the equipment had come down on a neighbor’s farm, allowing the team to coordinate its recovery.
‘Hayden was able to contact Garrison and drop a pin so they could find where they were,’ she said.
Ann Walter (left) called the Hale County Sheriff’s Office, which confirmed the object was part of an unmanned high-altitude NASA experiment.
The research equipment featured a NASA sticker, along with one from the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Lowell, which appears to have developed and launched it
Walter said she just started training for a new job, but called out to not miss this ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ experience
‘The team showed up and started putting everything up. Currently, I’m in training for my job, and I reached out to my instructor and stated, “I’m sorry, I have to go check this out,” and explained the situation.
‘They gladly let me go, so I could see the equipment and experience this once-in-a-lifetime situation.’
Garrison explained that the equipment ‘hung around Clovis and Portales for a while, and then early [Thursday] morning, the wind changed,’ and it landed in Texas.
The telescope is known as ‘PICTURE-D,’ weighing 1,500 pounds and measuring 14 feet long by four feet wide.
The project is funded by a $7 million, five-year grant from NASA’s Astrophysics Research and Analysis Program to UMass Lowell.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .