LUFKIN, Texas, May 5 (UPI) -- Search teams found the body of an elderly missing man and a pickup truck tied to a homicide investigation among the 80,000 pieces of shuttle debris, officials said Monday, as they closed out the largest recovery effort in U.S. history.
Wreckage from the fatal Feb. 1 Columbia accident rained down over east Texas, spurring hundreds of state, federal and local agencies into action. During the three-month search, rotating teams of about 5,600 people per day combed 2.3 million acres of land and water for debris.
Of primary importance was the recovery of the seven Columbia astronauts, a grim task that was accomplished with "honor and dignity," said Jack Colley, state coordinator with the Texas Division of Emergency Management.
In total, about 30,000 people were involved with search, which so far has cost about $302 million, Colley said.
"We're more than grateful," Scott Wells, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's coordinating officer, told representatives of local and state agencies that assisted with the search. "We're indebted to you."
So, too, is Nacogdoches County, Texas, which solved a missing persons case and obtained key evidence in a homicide investigation as a result of the search. County judge Sue Kennedy said Monday that in the hunt for shuttle debris, workers found the body of an elderly man who had wandered away from a nursing home and a pickup truck that helped solve a homicide.
In all, about 40 percent of the shuttle was recovered. The wreckage is providing investigators important insight into what caused the shuttle to break up as it attempted to re-enter Earth's atmosphere for landing.
Aside from the crew remains, key pieces of the left wing and a flight data recorder, NASA's accident investigation team head David Whittle said he was happy to find canisters of film that had been taken by the shuttle crew.
Whittle added that he would have liked to have recovered pictures the crew took of the external tank separation after launch, as those images might have helped accident investigators determine if a chunk of foam that fell off the tank at liftoff critically damaged Columbia's wing.
The camera was found in pieces, Whittle said, and the film ruined.
Although NASA has closed out its primary search area, the agency will continue to respond to calls about shuttle debris finds, particularly as hunting season opens in Texas. The agency is continuing to search for debris west of Texas, as those pieces -- which would have fallen off the shuttle early in its demise -- are of primary importance to the accident investigation, Whittle said.
(Reported by Irene Brown, UPI Science News, at Cape Canaveral, Fla.)
