- Reuters
United States space shuttle Columbia launches from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on January 16.
RICE, Texas (Reuters) -
DEBRIS FROM the United States space shuttle Columbia rained down onto fields and highways in Texas on Saturday, with witnesses coming across smouldering metal wreckage, including what appeared to be a door from the orbiter, local officials and eyewitnesses said.
A 100-mile-long debris cloud of ash and metal fragments also spread over the state's wide open rural spaces and into neighbouring Louisiana, local weather officials said.
One piece of wreckage about three feet by five feet was smouldering in a field near Rice, Texas, just off Interstate 45 about 45 miles south of Dallas.
Police were urging vehicles that slowed to look at the site to keep moving away from the toxic debris along the highway that links Houston and Dallas.
On one Texan field, wisps of gray smoke rose from a huge patch of blackened grass where debris had scorched the earth. The seven astronauts aboard the shuttle were killed after U.S. space agency NASA lost contact with them about 9 a.m.
Residents across eastern Texas heard three loud explosions and saw streams of vapour before watching debris rain from the spacecraft, Larry Mars a police detective in Palestine, Texas, said.
Television images showed Columbia, which was completing a 16-day mission, appeared to explode above Texas, immediately leaving several white trails across brilliant blue skies.
It was travelling 12,500 miles per hour at 207,000 feet above Earth -- only 16 minutes from its scheduled landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
There were no reports of injuries or damage on the ground from the debris that appeared to be scattered over a vast area of 120 square miles.
Local weather officials estimated the lighter material in the debris cloud would take up to 10 hours to finish falling, while all big pieces had likely already hit the ground.
Officials in Nacogdoches, Texas, said residents reported spotting many pieces of the debris dispersed throughout the college city of about 30,000 people, located about 145 miles northeast of Houston.
