This story was updated at 6:43 p.m. ET
An official confirmed Friday that the Columbia disaster investigation team is reviewing one or more images taken of the shuttle during re-entry by a ground-based military telescope. The image was released Friday evening.
In another potentially important development, a piece Columbia's wing was recovered overnight.
It is not yet known which side of the craft the wing fragment came from. But it was a large piece and contained at least portions of heat-resistant tiles and enough of the leading edge to do some analysis, said Mike Kostelnik, a deputy associate NASA administrator.
A report had been circulating that a photo of the shuttle taken from the Starfire Optical Range (SOR) at Kirtland Air Force Base outside Albuquerque showed damage to the shuttle's left wing as it re-entered the atmosphere but before the break-up occurred.
Kostelnik would not say in a mid-afternoon press conference which facility took the images, but he said "there are Air Force photos" and other imagery in hand. "It would be speculative to judge what those photos show." At least one was taken during the descent and amid Columbia's problems, he indicated.
He said these images and other video that had been obtained were all being analyzed today. He confirmed that at least one image was taken out West by a government facility that used ground-based optics, during the time when the shuttle problems occurred, and he essentially acknowledged that it was an Air Force facility.
Air Force images were taken as routine observations, Kostelnik said during a press conference that began at 11:30 ET. NASA had not requested any special help in photographing the shuttle.
Data gathered by Starfire has in fact been turned over to NASA, said Rich Garcia, a spokesman for the Air Force Research Laboratory. Since there is an ongoing investigation, the Starfire could only be released by NASA, he told SPACE.com.
The facility is a division of the Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate.
Meanwhile, the investigation has entered a new and more formal phase as an independent investigation team takes over from NASA. Kostelnik said to expect a change in roles and responsibilities over the weekend. He also hinted that the process of collecting and transporting debris would take weeks.
The painstaking debris search process includes bagging and annotating each piece so that officials don't lose track of where it came from. More than 1,200 people are involved in the search in the West, including:
- 800 National Guardsmen
- 400 state troopers
- 200 NASA people
- Dive teams for water searchers
- Dog teams
- 25 horse-mounted representatives
- 36 game wardens
- "Aircraft of all types" across federal and state agencies; some use side-looking radar to looking for larger pieces of debris
The searchers have chased credible opportunities in California, Kostelnik said. They are still looking in California as of Friday morning. These searchers have found some items, but none of these has been confirmed to come from Columbia.
"There could be material west of Fort Worth," Kostelnik said, and officials will review existing radar data in an effort to spot debris up to 150 miles west of the city.
Some heavy engine pieces are also being recovered.
Responding to criticism that NASA might be sequestering information, Kostelnik acknowledged that the investigation board would withhold knowledge of some aspects of the investigation until such time that data or debris had been analyzed well enough to say with confidence what might have happened. This, he said, is the way any serious accident investigation should work.
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