Pine Log

Issue date: 1/28/08 Section: News

Friday, Feb. 1, marks the fifth anniversary of the Space Shuttle Columbia explosion over East Texas while it was re-entering the earth's atmosphere. On that day the lives of the seven astronauts on board were lost, and material from the spacecraft was scattered across Nacogdoches and surrounding counties.

To commemorate the anniversary, the SFA Columbia Regional Geospatial Service Center and the Columbia Memorial Museum have set up a temporary exhibit of NASA memorabilia and two large-scale space shuttle replicas. Panels containing historical information about the NASA space program were set up with help from SFA forestry graduates. The exhibit is open to the public and admission is free. It will run from Jan. 26 to Feb. 10.

"(The explosion and resulting recovery effort) is a part of our history. We need to not relive it but remember it," Dr. Morris Jackson, director of the Columbia Memorial Museum, said.

"It's a reminder to Nacogdoches County. We can look back on a time when we know that we did it right, and we did it for the right reasons," Robert Hurst, incident commander for the search and recovery mission, said.

The explosion of the spacecraft over East Texas put Nacogdoches and SFA on the map for those Americans who watched and saw the first glimpses of the recovery efforts that were made. County Judge Sue Kennedy appointed Hurst, director of homeland security for Nacogdoches County, to lead the efforts for the county. He quickly organized the recovery teams that poured in from Texas and across the nation.

"We thought we realized the scope. We had no idea," Hurst said.

Five thousand volunteers from Nacogdoches County and 120 agencies from across the nation came in to help search for debris.

"Forty percent of the aircraft had been recovered. That was four times the amount of debris that is recovered from a normal crash," Hurst said.

Within two hours of the crash, the SFA Geospatial Service Center set the coordinate grid for rescue teams to use in order to search for debris.

It took about four months for search and rescue teams to find the 80,000 pieces of debris that were recovered. To this day not all of it has been found.

The downtown exhibit is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays; from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays; and from 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays. It is located downtown next to the Nacogdoches City Hall in the Wyatt building.

Anyone who wishes to volunteer can call the service center at 936-468-6100.

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