Feb. 3, 2012: Shannon W. Lucid, a member of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) first Astronaut class to include women, has retired after 34 years with the space agency, NASA announced on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012. A veteran of five spaceflights, Lucid logged more than 223 days in space, and from August, 1991, to June, 2007, she held the record for the most days in orbit by any woman in the world. Lucid is the only American woman to serve aboard the Russian Mir Space Station. She lived and worked there for more than 188 days, the longest stay of any American on that facility. Her time on Mir also set the single flight endurance record by a woman until Suni Williams broke it in 2006. Lucid, who holds a doctorate in biochemistry, was selected by NASA in 1978. She joined five other women as the agency's first female Astronauts. Her first three Space Shuttle missions deployed satellites. Her fourth Shuttle mission, in 1993, focused on medical experiments and engineering tests. Lucid traveled aboard Atlantis on in March, 1996, to the Russian Mir space station. In 2002, Lucid was NASA's Chief Scientist at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. She returned to the Johnson Space Center in the fall of 2003 and resumed technical assignments in the Astronaut Office. She was a Capcom in the Mission Control Center for numerous Space Shuttle and Space Station crews.
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