Tuesday, February 25, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Weather halts shuttle search
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bad weather halted the search for shuttle debris in the Nevada desert Monday.
Searchers hoped for the weather to clear around rural Panaca and waited to hear from NASA investigators on whether more than a dozen pieces of fragmented metal and aluminum foil found came from the shuttle Columbia.
Casey Wood, the NASA representative assisting the search team, said the fragments were sent to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana to be examined. Wood said NASA officials should know later this week whether the materials provide any clues to what caused the shuttle to break apart and crash Feb. 1.
After finding the pieces in a 14-square-mile area about 170 miles northeast of Las Vegas, Wood at first was optimistic they dropped from the shuttle.
But that changed as Wood didn't find any orbiter part numbers on the scraps.
"I'm inclined to think it's not from the shuttle," Wood said. "But I'll let the experts decide."
