Right.
And how would they track the Columbia in a pitched orbit to the North-East or South East (depending on its position in orbit), moving at 500 degrees per hour, with these equatorially mounted, ASTRONOMICAL telescopes designed to follow stars at 15 degrees per HOUR with only a West vector? Satellite tracking telescopes do not generally have the resolution to distinguish any detail at all. We are lucky to get fuzzy shapes.
The shuttle would have to have shut down all operations, closed the bay doors, and turned turtle so the bottom of the wings would be toward the Earth before any of these ground based telescopes could see a thing.
And finally, the only thing to be learned by such an examination was a moot point. IF the tiles were too badly damaged, the astronauts were dead, one way or the other. If they aren't too badly damaged, the shuttle will survive re-entry. A ground based examination MAY show the damage but the DEPTH into the insulation tiles could not be judged from such a distance. You cannot even SEE anything except a possible color differential and, according to John Jamieson, the most important tiles are actually Black Glaze on Black ceramic foam. Only the farther back, less critical tiles are Black on white.