She saw a car-sized object over a Texas farm and found wayward hunk of NASA equipment

When Ann Walter looked outside her rural West Texas home, she didn’t know what to think of the large object slowly drifting across the sky.

She was even more surprised to see what actually landed in her neighbor’s wheat field: scientific equipment the size of a sport utility vehicle, attached to a huge parachute, adorned with NASA stickers. She called the local sheriff’s office and learned that NASA was indeed looking for a piece of equipment that had gone missing.

“It’s crazy, because when you’re on the ground and you see something in the air, you don’t realize how big it is,” she said. “It was probably a 30-foot parachute. It was huge.”

Walter said she soon received a call from NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, which launches large, high-altitude unmanned research balloons more than 20 miles into the atmosphere to conduct scientific experiments.

NASA officials, who are affected by the current government shutdown, did not respond to messages Thursday. A message left at the balloon facility was also not immediately returned.

A launch schedule on the balloon facility’s website shows a series of launches from Fort Sumner, New Mexico, about 140 miles west of where the equipment landed.

Hale County Sheriff David Cochran confirmed that NASA officials called his office last week looking for the equipment.

Walter said she eventually spoke with someone at the balloon facility who told her it had been launched a day earlier from Fort Sumner and used telescopes to gather information about stars, galaxies and black holes.

“The searchers came out with a truck and trailer which they used to recover it,” she said.

But not before Walter and his family, who live in Edmonson, Texas, were able to take photos and videos.

“It’s a little surreal that this happened to us and that I was a part of it,” she said. “It was a very cool experience.”