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NASA balloon lands on Texas family farm, startling residents
A NASA research balloon unexpectedly landed on a Texas farm, shocking the Walter family before NASA’s recovery team arrived to retrieve the equipment.
A large piece of NASA research equipment came down on a family farm in West Texas this week. The Walter family was at home Thursday when they saw a huge parachute in the sky. They took photos and videos of the object before calling the Hale County Sheriff’s Office, as reported by The Mirror.
A recovery team from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, led by a man identified only as Garrison, soon arrived to collect the balloon, according to the Daily Mail. Local officials said the balloon was launched the previous day from Fort Sumner, New Mexico. It traveled over Clovis and Portales before landing on the Walters’ property in West Texas.
NASA’s balloon program operates high-altitude
NASA’s balloon program operates high-altitude, unmanned balloons that can reach up to 120,000 feet—about 23 miles above the Earth, the Chronicle reported. The balloons are used for several research projects, including studying cosmic rays and testing instruments for future space missions.
“I’m so glad that we saw this in the sky,” Amy Walter told the Chronicle. “What a cool experience.”
Also read: ‘Super Earth’: NASA discovers giant planet sending mysterious signal 154 light years away
NASA also made news this week for a separate claim that China’s massive Three Gorges Dam has shifted Earth’s axis by nearly an inch since its construction 18 years ago. The agency said this slight shift has caused the length of a day on Earth to increase very slightly.
Last month, NASA launched three satellites on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to study space weather and its effects on Earth.
“The IMAP spacecraft will study how the Sun’s energy and particles interact with the heliosphere—an enormous protective bubble of space around our solar system—to enhance our understanding of space weather, cosmic radiation, and their impacts on Earth and human and robotic space explorers,” NASA said.
