Telescope designed by UMass Lowell researchers lands in Texas after taking orbit

A NASA research probe landed on a farm in Texas with a family spotting the 6,000 pound device in the middle of their neighbor’s wheat field.

A giant balloon the length of a football field trailed behind it. On the side were several stickers, including one with the logo for UMass Lowell!

An engineer behind the project says it’s a telescope used to identify far-away planets.

“It’s a telescope mission that has a special instrument that’s capable of blocking out very bright stars to see what is orbiting very closely to them,” Christopher Mendillo Ph.D. said, Associate Professor with UMass Lowell. “So, we’re looking for rings of asteroid belts something like what we have in our solar system between mars and Jupiter and eventually we wanna be able to see actual planets.”

Mendillo is a professor and NASA engineer at UMass Lowell’s Center for Space Science and Technology. He said the telescope launched from a site in New Mexico and successfully roamed the edge of the atmosphere for 24 hours before strong winds caused it to drive off-course.

“We have no control over where it goes,” Mendillo said. “So, we launch, we’re at the whim of the high altitude winds.”

Mendillo said landings in the middle of a field, such as this one, are very common.

“They can’t direct where it’s gonna go but they can predict very accurately where it’s gonna go and then they just wait for it to be somewhere safe,” Mendillo said. “It’s very common somewhere flat like a ranch or a farm.”

Mendillo said only one aspect of the landing was unusual.

“It’s pretty uncommon that someone captures it on cellphone camera. I’ve never seen that happen,” Mendillo said. “Typically we come down in the middle of the night somewhere and nobody ever notices.”