North America·space‘It’s kind of surreal that it happened to us’: Rural West Texas woman witnesses NASA space junk as it lands in her neighbor’s yardBy Sean MurphyBy The Associated PressBy Sean MurphyBy The Associated Press In this photo vided by Ann Walter, Ann Walter and her husband, Hayden, stand in front of a piece of NASA re equipment attached to a parachute that fell from the sky near their in Edmonson, Texas, Thursday, Oct.
2, 2025. Ann Walter via APWhen Ann Walter looked outside her rural West Texas , she didn’t know what to make of the bulky object slowly drifting across the sky.
She was even more surprised to see what actually landed in her neighbor’s wheat field: a boxy piece of scientific equipment the size of a sport-utility vehicle, attached to a massive parachute, adorned with NASA stickers.
She called the local sheriff’s office and learned that NASA, indeed, was looking for a piece of equipment that had gone lost.
“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 said. “It was bably a 30-foot parachute.
It was huge.” Walter said she soon got a call from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, which launches large unmanned, high altitude re balloons more than 20 miles into the atmosphere to conduct scientific experiments.
Officials at NASA, which is impacted by the government shutdown, did not return messages Thursday. A message left with the balloon facility also was not immediately returned.
A launch schedule on the balloon facility’s website shows a series of launches from Fort Sumner, New Mexico, 140 miles (225 kilometers) west of where the equipment landed.
Hale County Sheriff David Cochran confirmed that NASA officials called his office last week in of the equipment.
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 stars, galaxies and black holes.
“The reers came out with a truck and trailer they used to pick it up,” she said. But not before Walter and her family, who in Edmonson, Texas, were able to capture some photos and s.
“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.” Fortune Global Forum returns Oct. 26–27, 2025 in Riyadh.
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