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BRONSON, Texas (Reuters) - Hundreds of National Guardsmen, federal agents, state troopers and volunteers closely searched this tiny Texas town on Thursday, looking for what was believed to be a top-secret device that fell from the shuttle Columbia when the spacecraft broke apart last week.
They formed long lines to walk through block-by-block and used machetes to hack their way through the thick woods that envelope the town, which is near the Texas-Louisiana border, 125 miles northeast of Houston.
The shuttle fell in thousands of pieces on Saturday, killing the seven astronauts on board. NASA is trying to recover shuttle parts from Louisiana to California in hopes of understanding why the disaster occurred.
Written instructions given to the searchers in Bronson showed a picture of a faceplate from the device, which in white letters on a black background spelled out "Secret Government Property.
