CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - The first pieces of debris from the space shuttle Columbia have been loaned to private-sector researchers under a plan to make the orbiter available for study, NASA said on Thursday.

Unlike its sister shuttle Challenger, which was destroyed in a launch accident in 1986 and later buried in an abandoned missile silo, NASA decided to catalogue each of the thousands of pieces of Columbia recovered from Texas and Louisiana and make them available for researchers who applied for access.

The pieces are stored in a climate-controlled area of the mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Columbia, NASA's first space shuttle, and the crew of seven astronauts were lost when the shuttle broke apart in the atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003, following a 16-day mission.

Eight pieces of Columbia, including pieces of fuselage and several tanks, were on their way to The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California, where the effects of re-entry heat and friction on the materials can be studied. Several other companies have asked for access to the wreckage and are being considered, NASA said.

"The idea of studying pieces of Columbia came to me in the debris hangar soon after the accident," said Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach. "It was clear to me we could learn a lot from it, and that we shouldn't bury the debris as we did with Challenger's."

Source: Reuters