Portal:Space exploration/Biography/Week 18 2007

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Linda Ham was the program integration manager in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Space Shuttle Program Office. In this position, she chaired the mission management team for the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia mission STS-107 that ended with the catastrophic destruction of Columbia upon its planned reentry into the earth's atmosphere. As a NASA manager, Ham was a U.S. government (public) employee.

Ham's actions and decisions, along with those of several other senior NASA managers involved in mission STS-107, were discussed repeatedly in the official Columbia Accident Investigation Board report, often in the context of management actions, practices, or culture that contributed to the disaster; however, neither she nor anyone else was individually blamed in the report for the deaths of the seven Columbia astronauts. After the report's release, Ham was demoted and transferred out of her management position in the space shuttle program.