Nevada team investigates possible shuttle debris
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Members of the Lincoln County Nevada Sheriff's department search for shuttle debris in a remote desert location near Panaca, Nevada.
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CNN's Miles O'Brien reports the foam that hit the underside of Columbia during launch was the focus of several reports during the shuttle's mission (February 23)
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LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) -- Teams searching for parts shed by the space shuttle Columbia as it broke apart found more small metal fragments Sunday in a rural part of southeast Nevada.
Digital photographs of the material were sent to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for analysis. Several small scraps of aluminum were also found Saturday.
NASA has not confirmed whether any debris west of Texas came from the shuttle.
Casey Wood, who was sent by NASA to aid in the search, said he was "80 percent sure the items" were from Columbia. Wood is an employee of NASA contractor United Space Alliance in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The search of about 30 square miles near Panaca, about 170 miles north of Las Vegas, began Friday and was expected to conclude Monday. NASA requested on Sunday that the search be expanded about 35 miles west of Panaca, search officials said.
A NASA official had told searchers that the hilly, sagebrush-covered desert near the Nevada-Utah state line could contain a six-foot chunk of the shuttle's landing gear, said Bob Williams, a sheriff's volunteer and a spokesman for the Nevada search effort.
Finding the landing gear could give investigators important clues about why the shuttle broke apart on February, 1, killing all eight crew members. The board investigating the accident has determined Columbia almost certainly suffered a breach along its wing and possibly its main landing gear compartment that allowed searing air to blast inside during its descent at nearly 12,500 mph.
The search teams turned up several metal scraps. Maj. Garret Coleman, of the Nevada Wing Civil Air Patrol, said some of the pieces he saw were from 1 to 4 inches long.
"It looks like tin foil with a fibrous material attached to it," said Coleman. "It's not charred, but there is some darkness to it that looks like it was exposed to some heat."
About 80 miles from Panaca in Utah, officials also were searching at NASA's request in the Kolob Mountain area near Zion National Park, said Washington County Sheriff Kirk Smith.
"None of the stuff I've seen looks to me like something that would have been on the shuttle," Smith said.
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