SPACE CENTER, Houston -- Searchers have recovered a fragment of space shuttle Columbia's left wing, which is thought to have played a major role in the accident, NASA officials said Monday.
Michael Kostelnik, a deputy associate administrator, said it was not clear where the piece fit in the wing and that engineers are conducting an analysis at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., where the piece was taken.
"They've identified that they have at least once piece of the left wing," he said. The wing fragment was found near Fort Worth.
Kostelnik said the wing included some of the dense carbon-carbon tile, an extremely dense material that covered the leading edge of the wing.
They will reassemble as much of the shuttle as they can in a hangar on the Kennedy grounds, and an independent board investigating the disaster will have offices in the hangar, said Bill Readdy, associated administrator for space flight at NASA.
Kostelnik said engineers are still looking at high resolution photographs of Columbia taken by a powerful Air Force telescope camera, but said "no engineering judgment" has been made on the images.
One photo, taken a minute or two before Columbia broke up, is drawing special interest. A dark gray streak can be seen trailing the left wing, and the leading edge of that wing appears to be jagged.
He said resolution on the photos were no better than what was released to the public on Friday.
Kostelnick said the agency is also looking at data collected by weather and Federal Aviation Authority radar to determine whether debris or a weather phenomenon could have been factors in the accident.
The Columbia investigation board held a series of meetings Monday in an office near Johnson Space Center, as its pace picked up. The chairman, Harold Gehman Jr. - a retired admiral who investigated the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole - said two to three teams of experts would analyze all the pictures and video taken of Columbia as it flew over California, Arizona, New Mexico and, finally, Texas.
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