During launch, a piece of the insulating foam broke off from the Space Shuttle external tank and struck the thermal protection system tiles on the orbiter's left wing.

Areas on the upper parts of the orbiter vehicle were covered with white low-temperature reusable surface insulation, which provided protection at temperatures below 650 °C (1,200 °F).

[3]: II-289  NASA retrieval teams recovered the SRBs and returned them to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), where they were disassembled and their components were reused on future flights.

After the mission, the NASA Program Requirements Control Board designated the issue as an in-flight anomaly that was corrected with the planned improvement for the SRB ablator.

None of the cameras that recorded the launch had a clear view of the debris striking the wing, leaving the group unable to determine the level of damage sustained by the orbiter.

The group's chair contacted Wayne Hale, the Shuttle Program Manager for Launch Integration, to request on-orbit pictures of Columbia's wing to assess its damage.

[5]: 140, 143  Intercenter Photo Working Group believed that the orbiter's RCC tiles were possibly damaged; NASA program managers were less concerned over the danger caused by the debris strike.

At a Mission Management Team on January 31, the day before Columbia reentered the atmosphere, the Launch Integration Office voiced Ham's intention to review on-board footage to view the missing foam, but concerns of crew safety were not discussed.

[14]: 1.12  The crew first received an indication of a problem at 8:58:39, when the Backup Flight Software monitor began displaying fault messages for a loss of pressure in the tires of the left landing gear.

Mission control stopped receiving information from the orbiter at this time, and Husband's last radio call of "Roger, uh ..." was cut off mid-transmission.

[14]: 1.18  The autopilot was switched to manual control and reset to automatic mode at 9:00:03; this would have required the input of either Husband or McCool, indicating that they were still conscious and able to perform functions at the time.

[5]: 43  At around 9:12:39, when Columbia would have been conducting its final maneuvers to land, a Mission Control member received a phone call concerning news coverage of the orbiter breaking up.

The astronauts' shoulder harnesses were unable to prevent trauma to their upper bodies, as the inertia reel system failed to retract sufficiently to secure them, leaving them only restrained by their lap belts.

[14]: 1.29 At 14:04 EST (19:04 UTC), President George W. Bush said in a televised address to the nation, "My fellow Americans, this day has brought terrible news, and great sadness to our country.

[17]: 104  Over the following days, the search grew to include hundreds of individuals from the Environmental Protection Agency, US Forest Service, Civil Air Patrol, and Texas and Louisiana public safety organizations, as well as local volunteers.

The crash killed the pilot, Jules F. Mier Jr., and a Texas Forest Service aviation specialist, Charles Krenek, and injured three other crew members.

[17]: 209–210  NASA conducted a fault tree analysis to determine the probable causes of the accident, and focused its investigations on the parts of the orbiter most likely to have been responsible for the in-flight breakup.

The damage to the debris indicated that the breach began at the wing's leading edge, allowing hot gas to get past the orbiter's thermal protection system.

[30]: 1  All recovered non-human Columbia debris was stored in unused office space at the Vehicle Assembly Building, except for parts of the crew compartment, which were kept separate.

[32] About ninety minutes after the disaster, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe called to convene the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) to determine the cause.

[5]: 231–232  The CAIB worked alongside the reconstruction efforts to determine the cause of the accident, and interviewed members of the Space Shuttle program, including those who had been involved with STS-107.

Cameras were added to the bellies of Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour (only Columbia and Challenger had them prior) to allow digital images of the ET to be viewed on the ground soon after launch.

[42]: 89–91  Before the arrival of the rescue mission, the stranded crew would power up the damaged orbiter, which would be remotely controlled as it was undocked and deorbited, and its debris would land in the Pacific Ocean.

[44]: 18  Post-launch investigations did not find any indications of damage from the foam loss, but ET video did reveal that a small piece of TPS tile from the nose landing gear fell off during launch.

[47]: 62  On August 3 the same astronauts performed the third EVA of the mission, during which Robinson stood on the ISS's Canadarm2 and went to Discovery's belly to remove two gap fillers between tiles that had begun to protrude.

[55][56] On July 12 astronauts Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum performed an EVA to test the NonOxide Adhesive eXperiment (NOAX), which applied protective sealant to samples of damaged TPS tiles.

[59] In 2004, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe canceled a planned servicing of the Hubble Space Telescope and decided that future missions would all rendezvous with the ISS to ensure the safety of the crew.

[90] Michael Leinbach, a retired Launch Director at KSC who was working on the day of the disaster, released Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew in 2018.

[17][91] In 2004, the documentary Columbia: The Tragic Loss was released; it told of the life of Ilan Ramon and focused on the issues in NASA management that led to the disaster.

[93] The Scottish Celtic-Rock band Runrig included a song titled "Somewhere" on their album The Story that ends with a recording of a radio communication from Laurel Clark.