A telescope that was built at the University of Minnesota and funded by NASA has been found after mysteriously going missing over the weekend. The telescope was making its way to a NASA site in Texas when the truck it was being transported in mysteriously disappeared. The trucker, who has not yet been named, wasn’t answering his cell phone and didn’t turn up to the location he was destined for.
The trucker’s phone was later traced to a restaurant near Dallas, but there was no sign of the trucker.
Eventually, after receiving no help form the local authorities, the trucker’s son was called in to help in the search for his missing father and the balloon powered, space bound telescope. The son managed to find his father, who said the trailer has been stolen on Monday, but he did not report it.
On Wednesday evening the trailer was discovered by a couple of fellow truckers who work for the same company and had offered their help. They drove to Texas on the search for the missing telescope. They found the trailer complete with an undamaged telescope in a truck-wash in Texas.
Although the telescope cost $500,000 to build, to the average person it would only be useful as scrap metal. A NASA site manager, Danny Ball said; “It’s of no use to anyone except as scrap. You’d have to be pretty desperate to use it for that.”
