AREA DEBRIS FROM SHUTTLE? NINE ITEMS HAVE BEEN FOUND ACROSS CALIFORNIA.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - NASA's expansion into California of its search for space shuttle Columbia's debris has turned up at least nine possible pieces, from sites in Thousand Oaks, San Bernardino County and the San Francisco Bay Area.

In Santa Cruz, the object was a 2-foot-long piece of metal inscribed with letters and found on a beach. In Joshua Tree, a resident found a fire-blackened metallic rectangle on his driveway. In Santa Clara, an object was reported to have fallen onto a sidewalk, but it was gone by the time investigators arrived.

``People are finding all kinds of stuff and attributing it to (Columbia). But they have to check each one out,'' NASA Johnson Space Center spokesman Dave Youngman said.

Government spokesmen were unable to say Wednesday whether any of the California objects really came from Columbia.

Speculation on what happened to the spacecraft has centered on damage to the heat-resistant silica tiles that covered much of Columbia's exterior, protecting it from 3,000-degree temperatures as it re-entered Earth's atmosphere.

Foam insulation - possibly icy and thus heavier than normal - fell off the external fuel tank and hit the left wing about 80 seconds after launch.

After initial National Aeronautics and Space Administration denials that any sign of trouble surfaced while the spacecraft was over California, the widened search was prompted in part by an Owens Valley astronomer's observations of bright spots of light veering off from Columbia as it passed overhead before dawn Saturday.

An amateur astronomer then reported videotaping what appeared to be bits of debris coming off the shuttle as it flew over the San Jose area.

One NASA team was sent to San Jose, center of a cluster of finds of possible shuttle debris, and another team went to Phoenix, Ariz., while other teams continued scouring Texas and Louisiana.

While thousands of shuttle parts have been found in Texas and Louisiana, the debris found farthest west will be critical pieces for the investigation, said Michael Kostelnik, NASA's associate administrator for the International Space Station and space shuttle.

Kostelnik told reporters in Houston that the earliest debris could provide information about Columbia's breakup.

The California investigatory team was supposed to work its way southward, checking out reports from individuals and local law enforcement officials.

On Monday, NASA asked the California Highway Patrol to alert law enforcement agencies around California as to how to contact the space agency if people reported finding possible shuttle debris.

CHP spokesman Tom Marshall said he didn't know whether any of the reports so far were valid.

``We don't know how credible they are. We aren't rocket scientists - the NASA people are. It's up to them to determine what the objects are,'' Marshall said.

The Joshua Tree object is a 2 1/2-by-3 1/2-inch metallic rectangle that is less than a half-inch thick and has a burned spot in the center. San Bernardino County authorities were waiting Wednesday for NASA to pick it up.

``We just described it on the phone to NASA. They said it could be consistent with something that came off the shuttle. They asked us to preserve it for them,'' San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department spokesman Chip Patterson said.

A resident of Joshua Tree found the object in his driveway Saturday afternoon and called the Sheriff's Department.

``He ran it over with his vehicle before he really noticed it,'' Patterson said.

Marshall, the CHP spokesman, said his agency had also been told of possible shuttle debris in a Target parking lot in Sacramento, but he personally doubts that object really came from the shuttle.

Other objects were reported in Santa Cruz, in the mountain hamlet of Havilah near Lake Isabella, on Highway 101 north of the Golden Gate Bridge, in Fremont and Redwood City, and even in Los Angeles and Thousand Oaks, according to EPA officials, who were helping NASA check out the California reports.

However, Ventura County officials, besieged by media calls, said they had no knowledge of any discovery in Thousand Oaks.

Reporters calling the Ventura County sheriff's station in Thousand Oaks were transferred to a tape recording saying: ``We have no confirmed reports of finding shuttle debris in Ventura County.''

NASA said its earliest indication of trouble in the landing came at 5:52 a.m. PST, as Columbia flew over California at about 220,000 feet and 15,000 mph. Sensors on the left wing's landing gear brake line showed an unusual rise in temperature, then left-wing temperature sensors failed entirely five minutes later.

The shuttle disintegrated three minutes later as it flew over Texas, 16 minutes from its landing in Florida.

About the time NASA began receiving the odd instrument readings, bright bits of light were seen separating from the bright reddish dot of the speeding shuttle, witnesses say.

Astronomer Tony Beasley, project manager at Caltech's Owens Valley Radio Observatory, was standing outside his Bishop home when he saw two small dots and then a large one detach and fall away from Columbia.

Of the third dot, Beasley told the Daily News on Saturday, ``there was a significant brightening and then something definitely came off it.'' NASA asked Beasley to provide a written statement of his observation.

The agency also asked for written statements from Daily News photographer Gene Blevins and aerospace photographer William Hartenstein of Burbank, who photographed Columbia's passage from the Owens Valley observatory and also spotted bits of light coming off it.

NASA engineers were sent to a tracking and data relay satellite system ground station in New Mexico to collect data acquired by ground computers after communications were lost with Columbia.

NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base used its radar to track Columbia from about 100 miles off the California coast north of the San Francisco Bay Area to somewhere in northern New Mexico, Dryden spokesman Alan Brown said.

He said he did not know whether anything unusual was spotted by Dryden's radar.

CAPTION(S):

photo, box

Photo:

(color) no caption (man standing next to a piece of the space shuttle)

Box:

DEBRIS TRAIL FROM SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA

SOURCE: Daily News research

Gregg Miller/Daily News