The NASA balloon that carries a multimillion dollar telescope obliterated a car in Alice Springs, Australia, after failing to launch properly.

The balloon was launched in the Outback of Australia and escaped from its quay just before it was released. The capsule underneath the balloon contains the Nuclear Compton Telescope (NCT) of the University of California, Berkeley. The balloon flew across Alice Springs, crashing into a parked car before jumping over a second vehicle and afterwards booming to the ground.

According to V3.co.uk, local resident Betty Davies told ABC Australia that they were sitting in their car and preparing to move it out of the way. They were about a foot away from being wiped out.

She added that if it was not because of the other person's car being there, she would have been somewhere else by now, probably being wiped out.

The NASA balloon was part of a project to examine gamma radiation levels 25 miles about the earth's surface using 12 3D imaging detectors. The package included a processing hardware and atmospheric study equipment.

The director of the Balloon Launching Centre Professor Ravi Sood said no one was hurt in the accident, but the scientists behind the NASA project were distressed.