The forty county Texas debris field of Columbia.
Columbia Shuttle Disaster Highlights the Power of Geographic Information Systems
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At about 8 a.m. on Saturday, February 1, 2003, approximately 10 minutes before the Space Shuttle Columbia was scheduled to lower its landing gear, NASA lost communications with the shuttle and received no further tracking data. The shuttle was lost–and debris rained down over east Texas and Louisiana. The Texas geospatial community sprang into action.
The first maps were generated quickly. The Stephen F. Austin State University’s Forest Resources Institute in Nacogdoches developed the first Base Search Vector (a buffered line drawn over a basemap that delineated the initial search area) by mapping coordinates of initial reports of shuttle materials on the ground. See maps at: http://www.fri.sfasu.edu/Columbia/pages/pub_maps.html
