Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew

by Michael D. Leinbach

The FBI said they were investigating approximately twenty reported thefts of shuttle wreckage. They were also looking into seventeen Internet auctions of what people claimed to be pieces of Columbia. Officials suspected that souvenir hunters illegally collected over one hundred pieces of the shuttle.24 The US Attorneys Office announced a limited prosecution moratorium—until Friday, February 7, at five o’clock—for people who voluntarily turned in shuttle debris. Other callers returned items that they had picked up but did not initially turn over for fear of being accused of tampering with evidence. Interestingly, after the moratorium was announced for Columbia debris, NASA received a few calls asking if the moratorium also applied to material from the Challenger accident seventeen years earlier. NASA said yes—and several pieces of Challenger’s wreckage were then turned in.25