NASA had been warned by representatives of Morton Thiokol about possible failure of the O Rings at cold temperatures but NASA didn’t listen....
Yeah it sound like a few engineers knew almost immediately what happen with the O rings.
My dad, who was never one to bring work home with him, announced one night at the dinner table that they were going to loose a Shuttle sooner or later due to the o-ring failures.
They had already had full and partial burn through failures that vented SRB gasses but never directed towards the LOX tank.
He was one of the people NASA had studying the problem to ascertain if it was the o-rings or metal alloy or machining problem at the joints.