When Columbia began its fatal dive to Earth, the sleepy little city of Nacogdoches, Texas had no idea they would be thrust into the whirlwind of a mega-disaster and then become the hub of worldwide attention.

Shuttle engine parts, reentry tiles, lap top computers, even a Columbia operating manual were among the debris that fell from the sky, peppering multiple counties.

Quickly rallying to the catastrophe that early Saturday morning, teams of volunteers and professionals swung into action, zigzagging across wide areas of East Texas farmland, forest, brush and swamp in a saddened hunt for Columbia wreckage and the remains of the space plane's seven-person crew.

The ongoing search for strewn Columbia rubble has been aided by a bevy of high-tech tools, from high-altitude aircraft scans to low-flying powered parachute vehicles, along with remote sensing and Global Positioning System satellites.

Putting together the twisted puzzle pieces that was once Columbia is expected to help unravel why the spacecraft and its occupants were destroyed. In addition, the Columbia accident may offer insight into how best to deal with disaster situations, as well as Homeland Security measures to react to acts of terrorism.

"Columbia literally landed in our laps and we were on top of it within minutes," said Paul R. Blackwell, an information scientist for the Forest Resources Institute, affiliated with the Arthur Temple College of Forestry at the Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas.

Blackwell said that the institute churned out a variety of map products to help groups searching for debris. Those products required extensive use of remote sensing satellite technology -- France's SPOT, NASA's Landsat 7, Digital Globe's QuickBird, and Space Imaging's Ikonos spacecraft -- coupled to geographical information system software tools.

"We moved that imagery out into the field, into the hands of those searching to help them navigate," Blackwell said. "Our involvement was very early. We were days into this before the federal presence became known…the central command and control structure," he said.

The Forest Resources Institute typically focuses on forest health and management issues. But more recently, prior to Columbia's fall, researchers there had been delving into hazard mitigation efforts. On their agenda was how best to deal with floods, an industrial accident, or handling an influx of people rushing into the area trying to escape a hurricane that might pound coastal areas. Even a terrorist attack was considered, albeit unlikely in a rural community, Blackwell noted.

"What we never thought about was a space shuttle coming down on top of us. That wasn't in the plan," Blackwell told SPACE.com .

Jeff Williams, a remote sensing analyst at the Forest Resources Institute, said the hunt for Columbia remnants would have been impossible without satellite imagery.

The night before the tragedy, Williams was processing a Landsat 7 image of Nacodoches County, taken from Earth orbit in mid-January. Working long into the next morning to finish the task, the analyst headed home.

"I heard a concussion. An initial blast. The sound was so loud and the booms continued to roll and roll over an extended period of time. I tried to rationalize it…thinking it was an industrial explosion or a train wreck. I knew whatever it was, we were dealing with something that was pretty significant," Williams told SPACE.com .

Williams said that during his hurried drive back to the institute, the car radio reported the bad news: Columbia was lost. "Obviously, something happened close by. But I didn't know the extent of where that was. The first thing was to start producing regional maps of the counties that fall within that Landsat 7 scene. I knew it would be a good snapshot of reality just days before the event," he said.

Use your cursor to zoom in and out of Nacogdoches, TX. Picture courtesy of Space Imaging

As the hours moved on, reports of debris being found across the county grew.

One immediate problem cropped up, however. There was confusion over county road numbers versus more colloquial road names. Often, particularly in the case of long-time residents of the area, names are given to roads and areas, but not identified the same way in some map databases. Furthermore, photographs taken of Nacodoches by aircraft were some seven years old.

But map dot by map dot, a pattern emerged as to the overall "forensic footprint" of the Columbia wreckage, Williams explained.

Debris field reports began to vector outward to other counties, then stretched all the way to the Louisiana border, Williams said. With hundreds of people pouring into area, it was clear that terrain maps would be a high priority. "We had to give these people places to look," he said.

Eventually, the integration of pre- and post-Columbia crash satellite images led to a variety of products useful to federal, state, and local authorities and search teams.

The commercial remote sensing satellite firm, Space Imaging, retasked their Ikonos spacecraft on the day the space shuttle broke apart. A large area of eastern Texas was immediately imaged, followed a few days later by another photo shoot over Texas and western Louisiana.

"We're pleased to know that investigators find Ikonos imagery valuable," said Mark Brender, Space Imaging's Executive Director of Government Affairs and Corporate Communications in Washington, D.C.

The marriage of GPS, inexpensive geographical information system (GIS) software and high-quality, map accurate satellite imagery, Brender said, has enabled investigators to create a digital debris field which may be useful in understanding what happened to the shuttle.

Newly taken satellite imagery showed forest canopy that appeared disturbed, perhaps places where something had come down through the trees. Forces were dispatched to those sites.

In selected areas, Forest Resources Institute experts immediately were able to see broken tree crowns, busted branches, or general changes in the forest cover. Most noticeable, bright signatures in the forest canopy indicating highly reflective material both on the forest floor and the forest mid- and upper canopies.

Joining in on the search, volunteers flew powered parachute craft over remote, difficult-to-reach hot spots. At times, "significant items" were located. On occasion, a discarded refrigerator, a corn feeder, or some other rural refuse was all that was found.

Given the widespread nature of shuttle parts that hit the ground -- large and small -- luckily there were no reported injuries.

"All I can say is that God smiled on us. There's no other explanation. This thing blew up right on top of us. It literally rained debris across this strip of East Texas," Williams said.

To date, much of Columbia has yet to be found. On February 22, NASA flew an ER-2 high-altitude research aircraft over Texas, tracing portions of the path taken by the space shuttle as it disintegrated.

Similar to the U.S. Air Force U-2 spy plane, the ER-2 soared over select areas in a seven-hour trek. Imagery obtained during the flight is now being studied to determine if it can show the location of shuttle debris.

To help searchers analyze the imagery, various samples of debris -- not from Columbia -- were placed on the ER-2's flight path for comparison purposes.

Blackwell of the Forest Resources Institute said there were issues that did crop up early in the search for Columbia remnants. For one, Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite data varied between sites. Some teams used decimal minutes. Others used decimal degrees or a Universal Transverse Mercator grid system.

"There wasn't a good consistency on how people were setting up and using their GPS equipment," Blackwell said.

Coordination between local, state, and federal agency authorities was less than stellar, Blackwell added. "It didn't work as smoothly as it should have," he said, pointing out that five counties across Texas had to respond to the Columbia mishap.

"Our efforts from 15 minutes after the event until the present have been strictly voluntary. Yes, there were glitches. But for a sleepy little community, I think we didn't do too badly for ourselves," Blackwell said.