By Jeff Devine
It is quite a bizarre story. When Ann Walter looked out from her rural West Texas home, she was puzzled by a large object drifting slowly across the sky. Moments later, it landed in her neighbor’s wheat field — a bulky, box-shaped piece of equipment about the size of an SUV, attached to a massive parachute and covered in NASA stickers.
She quickly called the local sheriff’s office and soon learned that NASA was, in fact, missing a piece of scientific equipment. “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,” Walter said. “It was probably a 30-foot parachute. It was huge.”
Walter said she later received a call from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, which launches unmanned high-altitude research balloons more than 20 miles into the atmosphere to conduct scientific experiments. The Hale County Sheriff, David Cochran, confirmed that NASA officials had contacted his office last week while searching for the lost equipment.
A launch schedule posted on the balloon facility’s website showed several launches from Fort Sumner, New Mexico — about 140 miles west of where the equipment came down. Walter said she ultimately spoke with someone at the facility who told her the payload had been launched a day earlier from Fort Sumner and that it was used for observing stars, galaxies, and black holes.
“The researchers came out with a truck and trailer they used to pick it up,” Walter said. But not before she and her family, who live in Edmonson, Texas, captured photos and videos of the unexpected visitor.
“It’s kind of surreal that it happened to us and that I was part of it,” she said. “It was a very cool experience.”
With the increase in space activity, including from private companies, there is also an increase in space junk and debris falling to Earth.
NASA says at least one piece of debris falls to Earth each day. Most of the time, however, the debris breaks apart during reentry and rarely poses a safety hazard to people.
“A significant amount of debris does not survive the severe heating that occurs during reentry,” NASA says.
“Components which do survive are most likely to fall into the oceans or other bodies of water or onto sparsely populated regions like the Canadian Tundra, the Australian Outback, or Siberia in the Russian Federation,” according to NASA.
NASA also pointed out that although there is an increase in space debris falling to Earth, no one has ever been seriously harmed from such debris: “During the past 50 years, an average of one cataloged piece of debris fell back to Earth each day. No serious injury or significant property damage caused by reentering debris has been confirmed.”
The photo included was provided as a courtesy by Ann Walter by email.
