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Edge of shuttle wing recoveredLooters return 117 pieces of debris under amnesty
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Recovery crews found a "leading edge" of one of the wings of the space shuttle Columbia, but it was not yet clear which side it came from, a top NASA official said Friday. Trouble with the left wing, indicated by some of the final sensor readings from Columbia, is thought to have played a crucial role in the loss of the orbiter and its crew of seven. "We do have a large piece of one of the wings," Mike Kostelnik, a deputy associate NASA administrator, told reporters in Washington. "It is not clear which wing this is, but obviously, given the anomalies that we have on the descent coming through the left wing, obviously this structure is very important." In east Texas, more than 1,000 searchers looked for pieces of Columbia, as some scavengers hurried to surrender debris to avoid federal prosecution. Amnesty expiresAn amnesty for the return of stolen pieces of the shuttle expired at 5 p.m. local time (6 p.m. EST). "The grace period has expired. They are now subject to prosecution," said Nacogdoches County Sheriff Thomas Kerss, referring to souvenir hunters. Kerss said as many as 75 cases could be brought in his county alone. In Nacogdoches County, in the heart of the debris field stretching hundreds of miles across Texas and Louisiana, 42 people turned in shuttle debris by the deadline, he said. In all, 117 pieces of material were recovered. In Sabine County, east of Nacogdoches, Sheriff Tommy Maddox said, "We've had quite a bunch of things brought in ... every type, from real small there, to some larger pieces." Maddox urged that even tiny pieces be handed over. "That might be the one piece there that solves this whole tragedy." Pilfering shuttle debris is a federal offense. Wednesday, two Texas men were arrested and charged with illegally possessing government property -- shuttle debris -- and authorities vowed to pursue and prosecute souvenir hunters. In addition to the material turned over, Kerss said, authorities received more reports of debris in the past two days than before, which could have been the result of people returning debris to where they found it. EPA and GPSAbout 1,000 debris sites have been mapped in Sabine County, and about 400 of them have been cataloged, said Holly Morgan, spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service. A catalogued site is one that a response team has mapped using a global positioning system locator, and also photographed, described in writing and collected debris from, Morgan said. "We've picked up thousands of pieces so far, at hundreds of locations," said Dave Williams, one of 40 recovery team leaders working for the Environmental Protection Agency. EPA agents are spread over 23 counties along a 250-mile corridor. Each EPA team has a thermal imager and a device that detects chemical plumes. "If there's any kind of chemical, gaseous vapors, anything like that, we can pick it up if it's a high-enough concentration," Williams said. NASA has asked searchers to be on the lookout for a hydrazine tank, still unaccounted for by officials. "That's probably the most hazardous situation we still have out there," Williams said. Divers have yet to remove anything from the Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Texas-Louisiana border, though they have pinpointed some objects for removal later, he said. Witnesses had reported seeing a chunk the size of a car fall into the reservoir.
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