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Missing Oklahoma dog found safe more than 1,000 miles away. But how he got there remains a mystery

By CNN

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    Oklahoma (KOCO) — If you were to ask Melissa Burris about her 10-month-old Australian Shepherd, Rio, she would tell you he is an escape artist.

“He knows how to open a screen door, and any weakness at the bottom of the fence, he will find his way underneath,” Burris said.

But July 30 was the start of his longest disappearing act yet.

“He had taken off. His sister stayed behind, and I checked his usual spots. He likes to take himself shopping at the Dollar General on the corner and at the gas station across the street from it, and the gas station attendant said that he thought one of his customers may have taken him, even though he let him know that he knew the owner, and she’d be right here to get him,” Burris said.

When she got there, Rio was already gone. For weeks, she worried.

“I was afraid that he had been hurt,” Burris said.

But Rio reappeared more than 1,000 miles away on the East Coast.

“Aug. 11, he was scanned in Greensboro, North Carolina,” she said.

To get from Sand Springs to Greensboro, you would have to drive for about 16 hours or walk for nearly two weeks. So, how did he get there?

“We have no idea. Our best guess is that it was a long-haul truck or maybe a student going off to college,” Burris said.

How he got there doesn’t matter to Burris. What matters is that Rio was found safe, even if he was a little shaken up.

“I was just so happy. I was so happy and so grateful and thankful that he was safe and healthy and well,” Burris said.

Burris said getting him home was no mystery.

“We got to see all the mountains. We just drove through the Blue Ridge and the Smokies, and I think there were five different mountain ranges on our route,” she said.

Rio didn’t say much on the ride home.

“You got anything you want to say, big guy? I think that means he’s happy to be home,” Burris said.

She said if you can take anything away from this tale, it is to make sure your pet is microchipped.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

A NASA observatory will likely reenter Earth’s atmosphere this year after rescue effort falls short

By CNN
(CNN) — A satellite called LINK that recently launched to boost the orbit of a falling space observatory won’t be able to carry out its daring rescue mission after all.NASA’s decades-old Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is steadily losing altitude and in danger of reentering Earth’s atmosphere. Designed by Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies to save the observatory, the LINK satellite began to encounter difficulty in late July. Just weeks after LINK lifted off on July 3, it started to spin out of control.Katalyst was able to regain control of the satellite, but the company acknowledged that the issue cost it time, which would delay LINK’s rendezvous with Swift by about a month. However, that postponement — at least initially — did not seem to be a deterrent to the mission.Now, NASA and Katalyst have announced that LINK’s mission will not capture and boost Swift to a higher orbit “due to ongoing attitude control issues,” according to statements Wednesday.Swift’s science mission will come to an end as the observatory likely burns up in Earth’s atmosphere later this year, according to NASA.“NASA should be willing to move quickly and take smart risks when the potential return is worth it, and that is exactly what we did with this mission,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement.“This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting. The team moved with extraordinary speed to give Swift a chance to carry out more science while advancing capabilities America will need for satellite servicing in the future.”But LINK’s journey isn’t over yet, and the lessons learned could be instrumental for future in-space servicing operations.Demonstrating future capabilitiesThe mission team is forging ahead with its plan for LINK to rendezvous with Swift — but as a demonstration rather than a rescue.“We are going to learn everything we can from LINK’s rendezvous attempt and put those lessons to work on the missions that follow,” Isaacman said.Originally, LINK was expected to conduct a survey of Swift to determine the best grappling points on the observatory, a step that will likely be part of the satellite’s anticipated rendezvous, though it’s currently unclear when this test will take place.Swift wasn’t designed to be serviced in space, which means that insights from the demonstration could be used for future missions.“Katalyst designed, developed, and launched an experimental spacecraft to go after an ambitious mission on an aggressive timeline,” said Ghonhee Lee, CEO of Katalyst Space Technologies, in a statement. “We took on this high-risk, high-reward challenge and are proud of the milestones we reached along the way. We have already learned a tremendous amount, and now our job is to turn those lessons into something durable — building a repeatable playbook to inform future rendezvous and proximity operations and satellite servicing.”Filling the gapThe Swift observatory, which has no established observational replacement waiting in the wings, has served as an astrophysics multitool in low-Earth orbit since it launched nearly 22 years ago, quickly pivoting to observe celestial objects and cosmic events.But atmospheric drag, intensified by solar activity, exerted its forces on the observatory, leading NASA to predict that Swift would reenter Earth’s atmosphere once it dips below an optimal altitude of about 185 miles (300 kilometers) above Earth.Katalyst designed, built, tested and launched LINK in nine months. The robotic satellite lifted off on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket, which was released midair by the company’s modified L-1011 aircraft, Stargazer.Before the satellite’s launch, members of the Swift and LINK teams both acknowledged that the path to boosting the observatory was full of risks that could cause the mission to fail.“We were all hoping for more science from Swift,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC. “But we knew the takeaways from this mission would be worthwhile either way, and we have gained so much through the series of accomplishments up to this point.”The agency will rely on the rest of its fleet of active observatories to fill Swift’s gap and “will continue to prioritize finding new options to react rapidly to cosmic events,” according to NASA.“Building, testing, and operating this mission has already strengthened America’s space industry pipeline, advancing in-space servicing capabilities in completely new ways,” Domagal-Goldman said. “NASA is committed to supporting our commercial vendors as they take on difficult tasks with the agency, to push the boundaries of what’s possible.”The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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