Nevada debris doesn’t look like Columbia parts

Thursday, Feb. 27, 2003 | 10:03 a.m.

It is doubtful that any of the more than two dozen pieces of debris found during a search of the Nevada desert last weekend came from the space shuttle Columbia, an official said today.

Casey Wood of United Space Alliance, a National Aeronautics Space Administration contractor that took part in the search, said today that a NASA official who received the package of 27 fragments he sent by Federal Express Monday does not think any of them is part of the shuttle.

Wood said he, too, was not sure about the finds in the rugged high desert area near Caliente, about 170 miles north of Las Vegas. The debris included foil-like pieces, the largest of which was a foot long, and some switches.

"There were some things I had not seen before, but I could not discount them," said Wood, who shipped the debris to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. "One of our operations people there looked at it and said it is doubtful."

Scientific analyses still will be conducted on the debris, he said.

More than 100 pieces were found in Nevada, but Wood said he sent only about a quarter of them in case the package was lost in transit. However, he said, the sampling was representative of all of the pieces found. If none of the tested pieces turn out to be from Columbia, he said, he likely would not send the rest.

Today's fourth consecutive day of inclement weather again postponed the resumption of the search of a 15-square-mile section of Lincoln County near the Utah state line where NASA officials, based on radar reports, believe that a piece of the shuttle may have broken off.

A dispatcher at the Lincoln County Sheriff's office said this morning that four to five inches of snow were on the ground and that snow was coming down hard.

Search officials say they have about one-third of the designated area left to search and they may not be able to resume until Sunday at the earliest.

Officials at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston say the farthest west a confirmed piece of Columbia was found -- a shuttle tile -- was in the Texas panhandle. Debris from as far away as California has been sent to NASA for testing.

The Columbia disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1, killing all seven astronauts on board.

NASA officials were hopeful that pieces found in Nevada might help solve the mystery of the crash as they attempt to reconstruct the confirmed wreckage of the shuttle to determine the cause of the disaster.