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Does anyone know what this is?

I think we figured it to be a gasket for a exaust manifold or something like that. It does not look very much like a shuttle part.

Ya know, it ccould be a fireproof gasket for a explosion proof electrical j-box, but someone with intimate knowledge of the electrical system would have to make that call.

it's an exhaust manifold gasket from an internal combustion engine.

it APPEARS TO BE an exhaust manifold gasket from an internal combustion engine.

It is about the right size for one of the access doors for filling the FRCS with hypergols.

Here is a little more info on what they are looking for and where: To you all that know quite a bit about the shuttle, has anyone mentioned the sabotage word yet? Is that at all possible?

AP LOS ANGELES -- NASA sent investigators to California to look at possible space shuttle debris Tuesday as the search for clues expanded to the West Coast in an effort to find evidence of the earliest events during the fiery re-entry that preceded Columbia’s disintegration over Texas.

There was no immediate confirmation of any actual shuttle debris in California, where an astronomer reported Saturday that Columbia appeared to leave fiery debris trails in its wake as it raced through the sky over Owens Valley. An amateur video shot in northwestern Nevada also appeared to record such an event.

NASA told the California Highway Patrol it was sending teams to Northern and Southern California, CHP spokesman Steve Kohler said.

"They will be looking at two items that have been collected by local law enforcement," he said.

Michael Kostelnik, a NASA spaceflight office deputy, said earlier in Washington, D.C., that space agency teams were being sent to California and Arizona to check out reports that possible wing material had been found.

"Debris early in the flight path would be critical because that material would obviously be near the start of the events" as the shuttle crossed the country from west to east, Kostelnik said at NASA headquarters.

NASA asked the CHP on Monday to alert police statewide to watch for debris.

A small piece of something was found in a Target parking lot in Sacramento and seized by the Sheriff’s Department, said Sgt. Lou Fatur.

At Soquel, on the north end of Monterey Bay, a state parks official took pictures of an object on the beach and bagged it for NASA, a Santa Cruz County emergency services dispatcher said. Firefighters collected a burnt object about 4 inches long at a Soquel home, said the homeowner, who requested anonymity.

In another development, radar data from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Facility on Edwards Air Force Base was sent to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center for review, said Alan Brown, a spokesman at the Mojave Desert site.

Dryden’s radar tracked Columbia from the Pacific horizon to New Mexico, and that data would likely be coordinated with Federal Aviation Administration Doppler radar data to see what it showed, Brown said.

The intriguing California observation of Columbia’s descent was made by Anthony Beasley, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology’s Owens Valley Radio Observatory east of the Sierra Nevada.

Video taken from the Lick Observatory in San Jose also showed flares of light and what appeared to be parts breaking off the shuttle. It was taken by amateur astronomer Rick Baldridge.

Beasley, his wife and mother-in-law watched Columbia from the driveway of his home in the remote town of Bishop.

He reported seeing flashes and trailing objects, including one final distinct event in which something burning appeared to separate from the shuttle.

Beasley, program manager for the Combined Array for research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy at the Caltech observatory, wrote a report on his observation two hours later. The first flash occurred 10-15 seconds after the orbiter was first sighted, Beasley wrote.

"Possibly saw secondary material in trail immediately after," he noted.

"At time I thought -- it must have lost a tile (I was aware the shuttles routinely did when they landed, no idea what that would look like etc.)."