Debris From Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster Found in Texas

Yahoo News 8/2/11

Debris From Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster Found in Texas

A piece of debris from NASA's space shuttle Columbia has been discovered in Texas, eight years after the 2003 disaster that destroyed the spacecraft and killed its seven-astronaut crew during re-entry, NASA officials confirmed today (Aug. 2).

The debris was discovered last week in eastern Texas. It is a round aluminum power reactant storage and distribution tank from Columbia, which disintegrated over Texas as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere near the end of a 16-day science mission.

The tank was discovered in an exposed area of Lake Nacogdoches, in Nacogdoches, Texas, about 160 miles northeast of Houston.

"The only reason it's exposed is because there's a drought going on and the tank was under the lake," Lisa Malone, a NASA spokeswoman at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, told SPACE.com. "The tank itself is full of mud."