Immediately after the disaster, NASA convened the Columbia Accident Investigation Board to determine the cause of the disintegration.

However, the damage on STS-27 occurred at a spot that had more robust metal (a thin steel plate near the landing gear), and that mission survived the re-entry.

STS-107 carried the SPACEHAB Research Double Module (RDM) on its inaugural flight, the Freestar experiment (mounted on a Hitchhiker Program rack), and the Extended Duration Orbiter pallet.

[3] On board Columbia was a copy of a drawing by Petr Ginz, the editor-in-chief of the magazine Vedem, who depicted what he imagined the Earth looked like from the Moon when he was a 14-year-old prisoner in the Terezín concentration camp.

In this same payload were numerous crystal-forming experiments by hundreds of elementary and middle school students from all across the United States.

The moss and roundworms experiments' original primary mission was not nominal due to the lack of having the samples immediately after landing in their original state (they were discovered many months after the crash), but these samples helped the scientific community greatly in the field of astrobiology and helped form new theories about microorganisms surviving a long trip in outer space while traveling on meteorites or asteroids.

The heat of re-entry was free to spread into the damaged portion of the orbiter, ultimately causing its disintegration and the death of all seven astronauts.

The sunrise is representative of the numerous experiments that are the dawn of a new era for continued microgravity research on the International Space Station and beyond.

The seven stars also represent the mission crew members and honor the original astronauts who paved the way to make research in space possible.

[12]: 4, 44, 52–53 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.