The single person who, in the subsequent investigation of the entire Columbia tragedy, received the most blame was a senior NASA or JPL manager named Linda Ham. (this is all by memory).
Linda Ham was a high-up NASA official and there were numerous requests made to senior NASA people to get a U.S. government high-resolution spy-satellite to take detailed photos of Columbia in orbit as the engineers had SEEN the foam block hit the left wing on ascent and wanted photos to see IF there was any damage to the wing/. What, if anything, could have been done had they discovered the 6 to 10inch hole in the carbon-carbon of the left wing..... nobody is too sure but Atlantis could perhaps have been launched on a rescue mission.
Linda Ham was the principle person who refused to grant the requests for in-orbit hi-res photos of Columbia's left wing and she got basically HOOFED after the investigation. She was moved to a completely different desk job as far as I can remember. She basically totally ignored in-orbit shuttle photo requests and said "it's foam, it cannot harm the carbon-carbon leading edge of the wing, we've had foam strikes before, this is nothing new" or words to that effect. If she had said "yes ok" to the satellite-photo requests they could have known the shuttle was mortally damaged and re-entry impossible and death assured for all the crew if they attempted re-entry. Shuttle Atlantis was being prepped for the next mission and could, potentially, have been rush-prepared and launched to rescue the 7 astronauts.
There's a 400page PDF document issued by NASA called "Columbia Crew Survival Investigation Report".
I downloaded it and read it a few years ago. Spaceflight & astronomy etc has been a long-time interest of mine for decades.