Possible space shuttle debris found in Nevada sent to NASA

LAS VEGAS -- Bad weather halted the search for space 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 over the weekend 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 material provides 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 that resembled aluminum foil with hints of fiberglass.

"I'm inclined to think it's not from the shuttle," Wood said Monday. "But I'll let the experts decide."

Digital photographs of the material also were sent to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for analysis.

Wood was dispatched to Panaca to assist dozens of volunteers, local inmates and members of the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department and the Nevada Wing Civil Air Patrol who have been scouring the desert since Friday.

NASA officials suspected that part of the shuttle's landing gear had fallen in Nevada when the craft disintegrated, killing all seven astronauts on board.

So far, there has been no sign of the gear.

Ken Dixon, who commands the Lincoln County sheriff's search and rescue team, said searchers had to call it quits Monday afternoon after bad weather rolled into the area.

"This storm is supposed to here through Thursday night," Dixon said. "If it dumps three or four inches of snow, there is no point in us going out. It might be Friday or Saturday before we get out there again."

Dixon said ground teams have covered about 75 percent of the revised search area. Authorities also planned to comb another area about 30 miles away when the weather cleared if NASA still deemed it necessary.

In Utah, a separate search officially ended after a NASA investigator confirmed that debris gathered Saturday near the town of Virgin didn't come from the space shuttle.

NASA investigators zeroed in on the locations after air traffic control radar seemed to track objects falling into eastern Nevada and western Utah after the shuttle passed overhead.

If any pieces in the area are found to be from Columbia, they would represent the westernmost debris recovered from the shuttle.