On STS-107 engineers were shocked to see a piece of something - either ice or debris - fall off of the External Tank and hit Columbia's left wing. Two cameras spotted the debris, the E208 soft focused camera in Cocoa Beach and E212 camera from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Over the next eleven days engineers would study that video in detail to try to determine how it affected Columbia.
The Debris Assessment team produced three reports for the Mission Evaluation Room.
Debris Assessment Team Report January 21
Debris Assessment Team Report January 23
Debris Assessment Team Report January 24
The Mission Evaluation Room (MER) is a Mission Control team which performs off-line analysis during missions. It reports to the Mission Management Team.
The MER produces daily reports on the status of the shuttle's systems and any problems being worked. The foam strike was mentioned in three of those reports.
Author Philip Chien was given a copy of the Flight Day 12 Mission Evaluation Room report which cleared the foam on January 29, three days before the accident. After the accident NASA released all of the MER reports. In the original flight day 12 report the RCC is called "Radial Carbon-Carbon" but in the version released by NASA after the accident it's been corrected to "Reinforced Carbon-Carbon"
The STS-107 daily Mission Evaluation Room Reports.
The MMT room.
Chief Flight Director Milt Heflin in the MMT room with the Challenger and Columbia plaques.
Transcripts of the MMT meetings and recordings were not released until six months after the accident.
MMT chair Linda Ham brought up the foam strike analysis during the January 21 meeting. Her comments 'and really there's nothing we can do about it' were taken out of context after the accident.
Direct links to each MMT meeting's transcript and the media opportunity NASA had six months after the accident with preselected media.
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