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Shuttle parts reported in California, ArizonaDebris found there could be vital to probe
HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- As President Bush tried to comfort families and colleagues of Columbia's seven fallen astronauts at a memorial Tuesday, NASA dispatched recovery teams to California and Arizona, where pieces of the space shuttle were reported found. The agency said the parts were possibly tiles or wing material. "If it is wing material, obviously that would be very important to the investigation," NASA associate administrator Michael Kostelnik said at a news briefing. "Early material in the debris field is extremely important to the early events of the recovery that would shed important light on what the ultimate cause was." A newly surfaced video shows the doomed shuttle over California, with what appear to be pieces falling off of it as it re-enters the atmosphere. This could indicate that Columbia was already in trouble well west of Dallas, Texas, where its final disintegration occurred. (See the video) Kostelnik also said some large dense objects thought to be "one or more of the engines" have been discovered just over the Texas border in Louisiana. The pieces have been secured, he said, until they can be recovered. The NASA news briefing was short because much of the agency family was focused on the memorial held Tuesday at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where the president said the seven Columbia astronauts "go in peace for all mankind and all mankind is in their debt." "The final days of their own lives were spent looking down upon this Earth, and now, on every continent, in every land they can see, the names of these astronauts are known and remembered," Bush said. The memorial honored Columbia commander Rick Husband; pilot William McCool; payload commander Michael Anderson; mission specialists David Brown, Laurel Clark and Kalpana Chawla; and Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon. (Full story) Meanwhile, Environmental Protection Agency crews began excavating a large piece of Columbia's nose cone from the woods in Sabine County, near Louisiana. It was described by officials as being in "pretty good shape." The cone was bagged in preparation for removal from the site. Searchers scouring forests and deep brush of east Texas found a seat, two tanks and a syringe from an on-board experiment, Nacogdoches County Sheriff Thomas Kerss told reporters. (More on recovery efforts) The shuttle broke apart 40 miles above ground Saturday, scattering debris on roads, lawns, public spaces and forests across 28,000 square miles -- an area the size of West Virginia. (Map) The eight-member independent board charged with investigating the shuttle disaster made its first visits to debris sites. "Looking at the debris and being out here on site makes this accident more personal to us," said retired Navy Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., who heads the panel. "It brings it home, more real for us. It prevents it from becoming an abstract event." Already, the investigation into the disaster focused on damage to the shuttle's heat-resistant tiles and a problem with the external fuel tank. (Full story)
Tile damage stemming from the launch "may certainly be the leading candidate" in the search for the cause of the disaster, according to NASA. Sensor readings in the final minutes of Columbia's flight showed heat spikes and unexpected drag resistance, which would be consistent with damage to tiles that protect the shuttle from the 3,000-degree Fahrenheit temperature during re-entry. Space shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore said NASA is assuming that foam debris from the external tank was the "root cause of the problem that lost Columbia." (Learn more about the external tank) That prospect is a "sobering" one, he said, because it implies a fundamental problem with space shuttle flight design. Elsewhere, an unmanned Russian supply ship docked with the international space station Tuesday, bringing stocks of food and fuel to two U.S. astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut who had been scheduled to return to Earth aboard a space shuttle next month. (Full story) That mission and all future shuttle flights are on hold until investigators learn what caused the Columbia disaster.
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