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A great deal of attention has been paid to collecting debris from Columbia's breakup in the area of Texas and Louisiana. But the most significant debris is more likely to be a single serial-numbered tile, further west in Columbia's track. This tile may have grounded anywhere between California and New Mexico. Due to its low density, it's probably intact. If you wanted to find one 6-inch square object on the ground in a search area a thousand miles long and 50 miles wide, how would you do it?

We're going to grid the Columbia debris search area into 2-meter squares. The goal is to put "eyes on the ground" in each of those 2-meter grid squares. Here's how:

• We'll provide a means for volunteer hikers to upload their GPS tracks. A GPS track is nothing other than a list of coordinates which show the route taken. We'll consider a grid square covered if we receive an uploaded coordinate which lands within that square (in practice, we'll eventually look for two or three points per square, each from different times, to compensate for GPS inaccuracies).
• We'll provide lists of waypoints which volunteers can print or download into their GPS handhelds. These waypoints will help guide them to areas which need attention.

Volunteers will report debris found to Johnson Space Center via one of the following means:

Voice: +1-281-483-3388

Text and digital photos: columbiaimages@nasa.gov

Digital media over 10 Mb: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/instructions.html

Video tapes, prints and other physical items (don't mail debris!):

  NASA Johnson Space Center
  Columbia MIT
  Mail Code JA 17
  Houston, 77058-3963