Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster - Recovery of Debris

Recovery of Debris

More than 2,000 debris fields, including human remains, were found in sparsely populated areas southeast of Dallas from Nacogdoches in East Texas, where a large amount of debris fell, to western Louisiana and the southwestern counties of Arkansas. The Telegraph reported that searchers stumbled upon human body parts, including arms, feet, a torso, and human heart. Within the months following the tragedy the largest ever organized ground search took place. NASA issued warnings to the public that any debris could contain hazardous chemicals, that it should be left untouched, its location reported to local emergency services or government authorities, and that anyone in unauthorized possession of debris would be prosecuted. Because of the widespread area, volunteer amateur radio operators accompanied the search teams to provide communications support.

A group of small (1 mm) adult Caenorhabditis elegans worms, living in petri dishes enclosed in aluminium canisters, survived re-entry and impact with the ground and were recovered weeks after the disaster. The culture was verified as still alive on April 28, 2003. They were part of a Biological Research in canisters experiment designed to study the effect of weightlessness on physiology; the experiment was conducted by Cassie Conley, NASA's current Planetary protection officer.

Debris Search Pilot Jules F. Mier Jr. and Debris Search Aviation Specialist Charles Krenek died in a helicopter crash that injured three others while they were contributing to the ground search effort.

Some Texas residents recovered some of the debris, ignoring the warnings, and attempted to sell it on the online auction site eBay, starting at $10,000. The auction was quickly removed, but auctions for Columbia merchandise such as programs, photographs and patches, went up dramatically in value immediately following the disaster, creating a surge of Columbia-related listings. A three-day amnesty offered for looted shuttle debris brought in hundreds of illegally recovered pieces. There were approximately 40,000 recovered pieces of debris that were never identified. The largest pieces recovered include the front landing gear, and a window frame.

On May 9, 2008, it was reported that data from a disk drive on board Columbia survived the shuttle accident. The drive was used to store data from an experiment on the properties of shear thinning. Although part of the 340MB drive was damaged, the area that contained the data was unharmed and could be recovered.

On July 29, 2011, Nacogdoches authorities notified NASA about the discovery of a 4-foot (1.2 m) diameter piece of debris that was found in a lake. NASA identified the piece as a "PRSD: power reactant storage and distribution".

All recovered non-crew Columbia debris is located at the Vehicle Assembly Building, stored in unused office space. The remains of the crew compartment are kept separate from the rest of the debris.