The foam during the Columbia disaster was replacement over "environmental" issues. The original foam had not exhibited a tendency to break off. Have they reverted to the original foam, or are they still risking people's lives over Global Warming?
NASA is an agency of the federal government - what do you think they are doing? /sarcasm
All they did was not pack as much foam between the ET bi-pod strut mounts. They also put some kind of mesh embedded in the foam.
It is still a crappy solution, hamstrung by blind obedience to pseudoscience that claims CFCs like Freon are significantly affecting the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere.
Never mind that the "ozone hole" is nearly closed up again due to global cyclic changes having nothing to do with CFCs or human intervention at all.
This is about a different Chicken Little theory -- ozone depletion. CFCs used in the foam decompose into chlorine monoxide which reacts with the ozone. Trouble with the theory is that the oceans also produce about ten thousand times as much chlorine monoxide as the CFCs do.