Re: Astronauts fate
I'm afraid they realized what happened to them for a longer time than the Challenger crew.
The Challenger 7 underwent 25 G's at once with light blue flight jackets.
The Columbia 7 underwent dynamic pressures that first started slowly (and from that moment totally unlike their training and/or earlier re-entry experiences) and kept increasing , while wearing a pressure suit (but I don't know if their helmets were shut; I do know Kalpana was putting her gloves on the video).
We won't know.
Raoul