Linda Ham

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Linda Ham (née Hautzinger) is a former Constellation Program Transition and Technology Infusion Manager at NASA. She was formerly the program integration manager in the NASA Space Shuttle Program Office and acting manager for launch integration. In this position, she chaired the mission management team for all shuttle flights between 2001 and 2003, including shuttle mission STS-107 that ended with the catastrophic destruction of Columbia upon its planned reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. Ham's actions and decisions, along with those of several other senior NASA managers involved in mission STS-107, were discussed and criticized repeatedly in the official Columbia Accident Investigation Board report, often in the context of management actions, practices or culture that contributed to the disaster. Neither she nor anyone else was individually blamed in the report for the deaths of the seven Columbia astronauts, but she was singled out for exhibiting an attitude of avoiding inspection and...

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