NASA Career
Lucid was selected for the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1978. Of the six women in this first class with female astronauts, Lucid was the only one who was a mother at the time of being selected.
Lucid's first space flight was in June 1985 on Space Shuttle Discovery's mission STS-51-G. She also flew on shuttle missions STS-34 in 1989, STS-43 in 1991, and STS-58 in 1993.
Lucid is best known for her fifth spaceflight, when she spent 188 days in space, from March 22 to September 26, 1996, including 179 days aboard Mir, the Russian space station. Both to and from Mir, she travelled on Space Shuttle Atlantis, launching on STS-76 and returning on STS-79. Her stay on Mir was not expected to last so long but her return was delayed twice, extending her stay by about six weeks. During the mission she performed numerous life science and physical science experiments. As a result of her time aboard Mir, she held the record for the most hours in orbit by a non-Russian and most hours in orbit by a woman. On June 16, 2007, her record for longest duration spaceflight by a woman was exceeded by Sunita Williams aboard the International Space Station.
From 2002 to 2003, Lucid served as the Chief Scientist of NASA. Starting in 2005, Lucid served as lead CAPCOM (capsule communicator) on the Planning (overnight) shift in Mission Control for a number of Space Shuttle missions, including: STS-114, STS-116, STS-118, STS-120, STS-122, STS-124, STS-125, STS-126, STS-127, STS-128, STS-129, STS-130, STS-132, STS-133, STS-134 and STS-135.
On January 31, 2012, Lucid announced her retirement from NASA.
Read more about this topic: Shannon Lucid
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