Posted: Wed, Aug 3, 2011, 7:43 AM ET (1143 GMT)

A piece of debris from the space shuttle Columbia has been found in Texas lakebed eight and a half years after the shuttle was destroyed. NASA has identified the object, a spherical tank about 1.2 meters in diameter, as one of 18 cryogenic tanks used to store hydrogen and oxygen on the shuttle for use by its fuel cells. The tank was spotted late last week, exposed as waters of Lake Nacogdoches receded during a drought. Debris from Columbia rained down on that area of east Texas on February 1, 2003, when the shuttle broke up during reentry.