Shannon Lucid

Shannon Lucid, born in 1943, United States astronaut and biochemist. Lucid was a member of the first group of astronauts that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) selected specifically for flight on the space shuttle and one of the first six women selected as NASA astronauts.

Shannon Wells Lucid, born in Shanghai, China, began taking flying lessons when she was 19. She attended the University of Oklahoma, where she received a B.S. degree in chemistry in 1963, an M.S. degree in biochemistry in 1970, and a Ph.D. degree in biochemistry in 1973. From 1964 to 1978, Lucid worked as a laboratory researcher at several institutions. In 1979, she completed astronaut training and qualified to be a mission specialist on shuttle flights. While waiting for her first flight, she undertook a number of ground-based assignments on space shuttle flights, including participation in payload and shuttle testing and launch countdowns.

Lucid’s first space flight was aboard the space shuttle Discovery on a mission that lasted from June 17 to 24, 1985. On this mission the crew launched three communications satellites and deployed and retrieved an X-ray astronomy satellite. Lucid next flew aboard the shuttle Atlantis from October 18 to 23, 1989, on the mission that launched the Galileo probe toward Jupiter. She flew aboard Atlantis again from August 2 to 11, 1991, on a mission to launch a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite and conduct experiments related to the planned international space station. She next flew aboard the shuttle Columbia from October 18 to November 1, 1993, for the second Spacelab Life Sciences mission, during which the crew performed biological and medical experiments in the Spacelab laboratory module in the shuttle’s huge payload, or cargo, bay.

In March 1996, Lucid was on board Atlantis when it docked with the Russian space station Mir, the third such Mir-shuttle docking mission. When Atlantis returned to earth, Lucid remained at Mir along with two Russian cosmonauts for more than six months. She became the second U.S. astronaut—after Norman Earl Thagard—to participate in an extended mission aboard Mir and set a record for the longest spaceflight of any American.