I remember in 1998 when John Glenn was flying, there was a possible indication that a hatch or door had come open but it also could've been a sensor failure.

One of the ground based telescopes of the US Air Force was employed to attempt to determine if the hatch was open or not. Word came back it was closed.

If this was a post I read here or someone else knows more about this, please pipe up.

Now, if there were a gash through the heat shield and the black coating was removed from a number of tiles or they were removed altogether, it's quite possible this would be a high contrast feature that could be easily seen with such a telescope as mentioned before.

Given that this issue was investigated early in the flight, it would seem negligent if such an effort to image possible damage wasn't taken.

This make me suspect that it probably was if this issue was taken at all seriously by high ranking officials.

Now whether it would've been of any diagnostic value, I don't know.

But if it revealed possible critical damage, what then?