In Texas, a wayward car-sized piece of NASA gear lands in field

When Ann Walter looked outside her rural west Texas home, she didn't know what to make of the bulky object slowly drifting across the sky.

- BY SEAN MURPHY

She was even more surprised to see what landed in her neighbor's wheat field: a boxy piece of scientific equipment about 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 probably a 30-foot parachute. It was huge."