Shannon M.W. Lucid, commonly known as Shannon Lucid, was a NASA Astronaut who has participated in four Space Shuttle missions during the period from June 1985 to September 1996. During her last mission she spent a total of 188 days in space, including time on the Russian space station Mir. At the end of her last space mission she set a record for the most days in space by a woman.
Shannon Lucid was selected by NASA in January 1978, and became an astronaut in August 1979, when she became qualified as a mission specialist on space shuttle flight crews. Lucid served as a mission specialist on the following flights:
1. STS-51G. This was the Discovery 7 day mission, from June 17 to June 24, 1985. The mission was accomplished in 112 orbits, travelling 2.5 million miles in about 170 hours. Landing was at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
2. STS-34. This was the Atlantis 5 day mission, from October 18 to October 23, 1989. The mission was accomplished in 79 orbits, travelling 1.8 million miles in about 120 hours. Landing was at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
3. STS-43. This was the Atlantis 9 day mission, from August 2 to August 11, 1991. The mission was accomplished in 142 orbits, travelling 3.7 million miles in about 214 hours. Landing was at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
4. STS-58. This was the Columbia 15 day mission, from October 18 to November 1, 1993. The mission was accomplished in 225 orbits, travelling 5.8 million miles in about 839 hours. Landing was at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
5. STS-76 AND STS-79. This was the mission to the Soviet Space Station Mir. In order to prepare Lucid for the lengthy stay on Mir, she received a year of training in Star City, Russia. Her liftoff on flight STS-76, the Atlantis Shuttle, occurred on March 26, 1996.
Lucid’s return from Mir to the Kennedy Space Center was made on flight STS-79, the Atlantis Shuttle. She arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on September 26, 1996. During her mission, Lucid travelled 75.2 million miles in 188 days and 4 hours. Yes, it lasted more than six months.
Lucid served as NASA’s Chief Scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington D. C., from February 2002 to September 2003, with responsibilities for communicating NASA’s science and research objectives to the outside world. Since 2005, Lucid has served as a capsule communicator 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, and STS-128.
Shannon Lucid was born in Shanghai, China on January 14, 1943. Shortly after her birth Lucid with her parents were interned in a Japanese concentration camp near Shanghai, China during the Second World War. The camp was named the Chapei Civil Assembly Center, an inventive name for a concentration camp. The internees were not freed until 1945. A book has been written about the trying conditions in the compound by a University of Chicago theologian Langdon Gilkey. The title of the book is “Shantung Compound”.
Lucid’s parents were Baptist missionaries Oscar and Myrtle Wells. The family survived the concentration camp, and following the war the family returned to Bethany, Oklahoma where Lucid grew up. She attended Bethany High School, and following that she enrolled in the University of Oklahoma from where she earned her Ph. D. degree in biochemistry in 1973. Lucid married, either before or shortly after her graduation from the university, Michael F. Lucid, who was from the state of Indiana. The couple has two daughters and one son and five grandchildren.
Shannon Lucid’s Dutch American background emanates from her grandfather, Dr. Lee S. Huizenga. Huizenga was born in the Netherlands in 1881, and moved with his family to the United States in 1883. Huizenga, a physician, had moved to China in 1920, to become a medical missionary at a mission. While there he established a missionary leprosy hospital and became a world authority on that disease. One of Huizenga’s daughters was Myrtle Huizenga who married Oscar Wells. Both her mother and her father became missionaries at the same mission where her grandfather had established the leprosy hospital.
Note that Shannon Lucid was accepted as a candidate for astronaut training only five years following her graduation from the University of Oklahoma with a Ph. D. degree in Biochemistry.
REFERENCES
The sources for the above information are the NASA web site: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov and the Wikipedia web site.
E-BOOKS AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON; GOOGLE: Kindle Store Pegels
PROMINENT DUTCH AMERICANS, CURRENT AND HISTORIC
EIGHT PROMINENT DUTCH AMERICAN FAMILIES: THE ROOSEVELTS, VANDERBILTS AND OTHERS, 2015
FIFTEEN PROMINENT DUTCH AMERICAN FAMILIES: THE VAN BURENS, KOCH BROTHERS, VOORHEES AND OTHERS, 2015
PROMINENT DUTCH AMERICANS IN U.S. GOVERNMENT LEADERSHIP POSITIONS, 2015
DUTCH PEGELS INVOLVED IN WARS
ALLIED EUROPE CAMPAIGN—1944/1945: TACTICAL MISTAKES, 2017
THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN THE NETHERLANDS: MEMOIRS, 2017
FRENCH REVOLUTION, NAPOLEON AND RUSSIAN WAR OF 1812, 2015