Shuttle Debris Will Be Returned To KSC

The Space Shuttle Columbia, doomed to a firey breakup on re-entry just 16 minutes before its scheduled touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center, will begin its final journey home this week. Debris from Texas and Louisiana, which is now being sent to Barksedale AFB in Shreveport, will be sent to Cape Canaveral around the middle of next week, according to NASA officials.

"The first pieces are almost ready to ship, and Kennedy is preparing a facility for them," said NASA spokesman Dave Drachlis.

80 Percent Of Known Debris Recovered

Meantime, exhausted search crews along the Texas-Louisiana border are getting more help. Additional recovery workers continue pouring into towns like Nacogdoches, Hemphill and San Augustine. Some 300 National Guard troops who have been helping find and mark shuttle debris are being moved from Nacogdoches to Sabine County to augment recovery efforts there.

Nacogdoches County Sheriff Tommy Kerss said 80-percent of the known debris sites in his jurisdiction had been cleared. He expected all known sites would be cleaned up before Sunday night.

"The drive and human spirit being displayed throughout all of this has been tremendous," Kerss said.

The most significant discovery in the debris field so far has been a 2-foot section of shuttle wing, including the carbon-covered leading edge designed to protect Columbia's insulating tiles as the spacecraft heats to 3,000 degrees re-entering the atmosphere.

If that section came from the troubled left wing, where temperatures surged in the shuttle's final moments and sensors failed in rapid sequence, it could provide hard evidence of what went wrong.

O'Keefe: Wish We Could Have Met Under Different Circumstances 

Investigators hadn't yet determined which wing the fragment belonged to, but should know "in relatively short order," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said Saturday after a memorial service at Louisiana's Barksdale Air Force Base, where pieces of the shuttle are being stored.

In Lufkin (TX), site of the recovery command post, hundreds of workers paused at eight Saturday morning - one week to the moment after the shuttle disaster - to remember the seven astronauts who died when Columbia broke up on re-entry.

O'Keefe offered his thanks to Lufkin.

"The good people of Lufkin could not have possibly planned for 1,500 folks to suddenly descend from 20 different federal agencies and state and local organizations," said O'Keefe.

"It is a fervent wish we could have made all your acquaintances under different circumstances."

Lightning Strike?

NASA officials are now reportedly investigating the possibility Columbia broke-up over the skies of Texas after being struck by high altitude lightning.

Photographs taken by an amateur astronomer in San Francisco shows a purplish electrical bolt striking the ill-fated shuttle soon after it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and streaked across the California sky.

The digital image is one of five snapped by the shuttle buff as sensors on the doomed vehicle began showing the first indications of trouble, with temperature spikes on the left wing and wheel well.

Less than seven minutes later the shuttle, carrying six Americans and one Israeli astronauts, disintegrated over Texas. On Friday, NASA officials said they were moving away from an initial theory that the tragedy was caused by insulation foam, on the external fuel tank, breaking-off during the January 16 launch and striking the left side of the 21-year-old shuttle.

The only thing ruled out, definitively and swiftly, is that Columbia was brought down by terrorists. With Israel's first astronaut on board, terrorism had been the major concern for the shuttle's launch and its return to Florida 16 days later. Federal officials said the shuttle was too high when it broke up 207,135 feet to be reached by any surface-to-air missile.

FMI: www.nasa.gov