Samsung describes the return to Earth of its "SpaceSelfie" device as an "early soft landing in a selected rural area," though that "soft landing" turned out to be a bit startling, and even a little mysterious, for the Michigan couple that found it had crash-landed on their farm. The Gratiot County Herald reports that Nancy Mumby-Welke and her husband, Dan, were about to let their horses out just before 9am Saturday when they heard a loud sound. Per ABC News, when they headed out to their front yard to see what all the commotion was about, the Welkes found what the news site describes as a "four-legged object with an aluminum foil-wrapped box and solar panels attached to the top of it," with two cameras and a Samsung cellphone inside. The Herald notes the device was "still humming and whirring."
"Oh my look what fall out of the sky," Mumby-Welke posted on Facebook, per the Detroit Free Press. What it turned out to be, per Samsung: the company's "SpaceSelfie" device, launched into space Oct. 16 so folks back on Earth could upload selfies to the contraption so their pics could be captured with Earth as the backdrop; model Cara Delevingne was the first participant. Samsung says in a statement the landing of the "pseudo satellite" and its high-altitude balloon—which ABC notes split off and landed on power lines in Gratiot County—was a planned one due to weather conditions. Mumby-Welke tells NBC that a man from Raven Industries, which reportedly launched the device, came to get it a few hours after the crash, though he "told us he wasn't at liberty to talk about it." She adds: "Just imagine what could have happened if someone had been out there." (More satellite stories.)
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