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Columbia debris search completedHunters, beachcombers can still help
From Philip Chien
LUFKIN, Texas (CNN) -- NASA declared Monday it has wrapped up its large-scale search for debris from the space shuttle Columbia -- a three month, $302 million hunt that involved more than 30,000 people and has so far yielded pieces that make up about 40 percent of the orbiter. The search covered some 700,000 acres in eastern Texas and western Louisiana, an area roughly the size of Rhode Island. "We had people walking within 10 feet of each other on a 210 mile strip, 4 miles wide and they didn't miss very much," said David Whittle, head of NASA's debris collection effort that involved more than 100 federal and state agencies. Columbia disintegrated as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere February 1, killing all seven astronauts aboard. Its break-up began near the coast of California and continued eastward to Louisiana. The bodies of the crew members were found in Texas. The debris is critical to the efforts of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), which is charged with determining why the shuttle broke up. "We've recovered very close to 40 percent of the shuttle," said Whittle. "It's about twice as much as predicted that we would recover." The hunt involved people on foot, in airplanes, and underwater divers. "Just the ground operation was the equivalent of one person walking from the Earth to the moon, seven laps around the moon, then walking back to the Earth and one lap around the Earth and still have 2,000 more miles to go," Wells said. Searchers also happened upon the body of a man who wandered away from a nursing home, as well as a pickup truck that was connected to a homicide investigation. Important clues may be westwardWhile the formal, intense search of the primary crash site has been completed, smaller searches in specific areas will continue. Investigators remain interested in finding pieces that may lie further westward from the main debris field, as those would have been some of the first to come off and may hold important clues about what caused the disaster. The working theory is that pieces of foam that hit the shuttle's left wing shortly after takeoff may have caused a breach in the orbiter's thermal protection system. During re-entry, hot gases entered that breach, causing Columbia to break apart. The CAIB will make its theory official shortly, after hammering out details of the hypothesis. But the board has gone back and forth many times on the specifics of the cause of the accident. "Anything that came off early is important," said Whittle. "There were a number of [search] boxes identified based on a combination of radar, video, and flight dynamics. One of those boxes is in New Mexico, there's a couple of them in Nevada and Utah," he said. But much of the target area lies covered by snow. "We've done a little bit in New Mexico, we've got a little bit more to go there in the Albuquerque area. Thus far we haven't turned up anything. The terrain there is incredibly rugged and difficult to search. We've [also] had searches along the California coast," Whittle said, adding that he expects those searches will be completed within a month. The coastal search is being made in the hopes that anything that may have fallen off the shuttle as it flew over the Pacific Ocean would be light enough to float and may wash up on the beach. Members of environmental groups who normally walk the beaches to pick up litter or search for injured animals have been asked to keep an eye out for potential debris. Every hunter in Texas will be given a flyer when they renew their hunting license instructing them what to do if they find shuttle debris. The recovery teams have asked anybody who finds something they believe is a piece of Columbia debris to call 1-866-446-6603. "Depending on the debris, if it's something small there's a good chance we'll just ask you to FedEx it," Whittle said. "We've got a number to let people FedEx things at no cost. If it turns out to be something larger, or something toxic they'll send someone out to respond to it. They'll decontaminate it."
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