The Nose Part of Crashed Columbia Found

In the evening of Monday, in the pine forest in the east of Texas there has been found the nose part of the crashed American space shuttle Columbia.

The report was carried by the Environmental Protection Agency responsible for the search for and collection of the shuttle debris.

According to the Agency, the nose part of the space shuttle has deeply penetrated the earth. As the spokesman for the Agency reported, this part of the shuttle has not been practically damaged. It is planned that already today the work will begin on taking it out of the earth.

As has already been reported earlier, in the Nacogdoches County, there was found a big piece of the front part of the shuttle's fuselage with fragments of the cabin. According to the county sheriff, Thomas Kerss, the fragments contain pieces of an astronaut's seat. On Tuesday, the divers will continue the searches for a big piece of the shuttle that fell into a pond in the area of the border between Texas and Louisiana. According to the authorities, the size of this fragment equals a car.

At the present time, 12,000 fragments of the shuttle have already been collected. The search for the parts of the crashed shuttle is being conducted in the area of 28,000 square miles. They are being brought to the Barksdale Air Force base in Louisiana where experts will try to remake the spaceship with the aim of finding out the cause of the disaster.

Earlier, fragments of the bodies of all seven astronauts were found.