A NASA telescope that launched on a football-stadium-sized balloon earlier this year lost communication with Earth and suffered damage upon landing in Argentina in June.
Luckily, the data it had collected — 200 gigabytes' worth of stunning images of galaxy clusters taken while floating 100,000 feet (30,000 meters) above Earth's surface — had been copied to old-fashioned SD drives and parachuted to the ground safely, showing that valuable science data can be salvaged even in a "worst-case scenario," scientists reported on Tuesday (Nov. 14).
