Congratulations Atlantis on your highly successful mission, and of course, welcome home, Shannon, from your record setting flight above Mir.

When Shannon Lucid returned from her most recent mission, she was hailed as a hero, the first woman in the world to fly in space five times. The first American woman to fly as a crew member onboard the Russian Space Station Mir. And when her four and a half month mission onboard the Russian Space Station extended into six months, she set a record for long duration space flight by an American astronaut.

By most standards, she is an unlikely hero. 54 years old, and a wife and mother of three, Shannon began her unique career in an era when opportunities for women in science were limited, even discouraged.

Shannon: Now obviously the time frame when I grew up, there was one major obstacle and that was everyone always told females that girls couldn’t do anything. Because when I grew up, females were not expected to grow up and go to work. So that was one very major obstacle that was always sort of coming up every time you said you wanted to do something and the answer was, "Well, girls don’t do that."

Well I think there are, the main way that I overcame that obstacle was I didn’t believe any adult that said that. And also I have to be honest, that my parents never said that. As a matter of fact, my parents always supported everything that I ever wanted to do. And any time I would come home with some other far-out idea of something I wanted to do, they just said, "Well that’s just really nice." And then I’d say, "Well I need to get some of this," and if it was in the realm of possibility, then they would help me accomplish what it was that I wanted to do.

F: Raised to believe that she was free to choose her own destiny, Shannon developed a key interest in science.

Shannon: I remember very specifically, when I decided I wanted to be a chemist, and that’s when I was in the 4th grade. And I read, and it wasn’t a thick book, it was just somewhere that I read, that water was composed of hydrogen and oxygen. And I knew that hydrogen and oxygen were gases and I just thought that was the most amazing thing on the face of this Earth. That you could take gases and make water.

And someone told me it was a chemist that finds out those kind of things. And I thought, wow, that would be so neat to be able to know stuff like that and to be able to find out stuff like that.

I also thought it would be really neat to be able to grow up and explore space. And the way I came to that was because I was very interested in the American West. And I always thought it would be really neat to grow up and be a pioneer, but unfortunately I was born in the wrong time.

And then I thought, well I could grow up and be an explorer of the Earth. But then you know how it is, when you’re in grade school, you figure everything’s going to be done by the time that you’re an adult. So about that time, I started reading about Robert Goddard and the rockets that he’d worked with out in New Mexico. And I also started reading some science fiction. And I thought, wow, I can grow up and explore the universe, because that certainly won’t be all finished by the time I grow up.

So when I was in 8th grade we were supposed to write a paper on what we were going to be when we grew up. And I wrote a paper on being a rocket scientist because I thought that would just be a really neat thing to be. And of course my teacher thought I was not fulfilling the assignment, because in those days, we didn’t even have-, America was not even in a space program.

So she was not overly enthused with the way that I fulfilled the assignment, but I thought it was pretty good.

When I was in high school, in was very fortunate to have a very good math and science teacher. Her name was Mrs. [Moon]. And she encouraged all of the students to study science and she also encouraged us to enter science fairs, which I thought was a very good thing.

F: Shannon pursued her interest in science and enrolled at the University of Oklahoma as a chemistry major.

Shannon: Well when I went to college, there were not very many women that were in my science classes. And there were not very many women that were in my math classes. As a matter of fact, many of the classes that I was in, I was the only female that was in the class. So a lot of times, the professor would sort of say, "Well, why are you here? Why are you wasting your time?"

But I was having a good time and I was enjoying my sciences and this was what I wanted to do. So I was very fortunate that I was able to do that.

F: After receiving her degree in chemistry, Shannon continued her studies, earning a master and Dr. of Philosophy degrees in biochemistry. It was during her college career that she met her husband, Michael.

By the mid-‘70s, she was a busy mother of three, working in medical research.

A few years later, when NASA announced that women could qualify for the first time in an astronaut selection, Shannon, with her family’s support, didn’t hesitate to take on the challenge.

Shannon: Well, it wasn’t a big surprise to my husband, because before we got married, he was well aware that I, this was something that I had always wanted to do.

And so when I saw the announcement that NASA was going to accept females, then I told them, I said, "I want to go fly." And he said, "Well go right ahead."

I think it would have been impossible to do without the full support of the family.

As a matter of fact, the last flight that I made on MIR, I think one of the primary reasons why it worked out so well and that I had such a good time, was that I had such total support from my family. And I don’t think that that can be underestimated at all.

F: In January of 1978, Shannon became one of six women selected to train at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Seven years later, she made her first trip into space onboard [STS 51-G].

Three more flights followed. STS 34 in 1989, STS 43 in 1991, and STS 58 in 1993. It was after this last flight that Shannon became interested in the cooperative effort between the United States and Russia, to prepare for the new International Space Station by flying American astronauts as crew members onboard Russia’s Space Station MIR.

She was selected to be the second American onboard MIR, following [Norm Thaggart]. In 1995, she moved to the Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, to begin a lengthy training course.

Shannon: There were a lot of reasons I wanted to do it. But one of the reasons was because I wanted to go to Russia and live and train, because I really enjoy living in different countries, I enjoy getting along in different cultures. And I also wanted to know what it would be like to be on a long space flight vs. a short one. And so those were all the reasons why I volunteered for this flight, and why I wanted to do it.

We spent a year in Russia training for the flight. And the entire time that we were living there, we were speaking in Russian. As a matter of fact, there were a couple weeks that would go by where I did not speak English to anybody except the person I was training with, [John Waha].

And this forced us to learn the Russian language, which we needed to know when we lived on MIR, because the cosmonauts only speak Russian. And Russian is a very difficult language, it’s a lot harder than English, but we learned enough so that we were able to get by.

F: In March, 1996, the crew of STS 76 launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Their mission, rendezvous and dock with the MIR Space Station, deliver supplies and drop off Shannon.

There were a few days of joint activities, and an emotional farewell. The shuttle undocked from the MIR and headed home, landing back in Florida to conclude its successful 10-day mission. It would be a full six months before Shannon would see her colleagues back on Earth.

Shannon: I guess one of the main reasons that I really enjoyed being up on MIR and working for a long period of time was because I’ve always enjoyed working in a laboratory, and there I was on MIR, I had a laboratory that was basically mine, [Paroda], and it had all the United States experiments in there and they were very interesting experiments. And there was a wide variety of experiments. So I could get up in the morning, I could sort of plan what I wanted to do, go to work in my laboratory, and then interact with other scientists. And I just really enjoyed doing that.

I was extremely fortunate because I had two absolutely wonderful people as crew people, as part of my crew. And that was [Yuri Onofrenko and Yuri Usichenk] two Russian cosmonauts.

I don’t think that made any difference, whether it was, what the mix was in the male-female mix.

I think the important thing was compatibility of the crew. Yuri, Yuri and myself were able to get along real well together and the thing that we did most often was we would work together and we would laugh a lot together. And it just worked out so that generally, we were having a good time.

I never got tired at looking out the window and looking at our Earth. It is just so beautiful. And the one thing that I really enjoyed on this long space flight was the fact that I was able to see the seasons change on the Earth. Now I started off in March, and so as we were flying over the Northern Hemisphere, I’d look out and I could see the frozen lakes and I could see snow on all the Central Asia as we flew over. And then in just the space of a few weeks, I saw the ice break up on all these lakes. And then I saw the snow melt and then the green fields come up. And it was just a remarkable experience to see the seasons change.

One of the very beautiful things that I saw when I was up on MIR was we had a real good pair of binoculars, and so as we flew over Kennedy Space Center, and I’ll look down, I could see Atlantis on the pad ready to launch and that was pretty neat. And then after Atlantis, after the STS 79 launched, we could see as it sort of climbed up in the sky. So that was pretty neat knowing that somebody was coming to rendezvous with us and then I was going to get to come home.

F: On a rainy day in September of 1996, Shannon Lucid was welcomed home to Houston by a hearty group of well-wishers, including the President of the United States.

President Clinton: It’s an amazing, amazing achievement. And I know I speak for all Americans when I say I think we all feel at least, that we’ve gotten to know Dr. Lucid, watching her grin and bear it as the mission was extended. Hearing her eagerness to see her family, her yearning for what she called the wind and the sun. Perhaps more than she knows, she has also set a remarkable example for a new generation of young Americans, and especially young girls all across this country, who look up to her and now see new possibilities for themselves. And we thank her for that as well.

F: After having been back on the planet for only 24 hours, she walked unassisted and gave a speech, thanking everyone for their support.

Shannon: Gosh it’s great to be home. And I want to say thank you to everybody that supported the mission here on the ground. It was a great mission, it was a great adventure. I thoroughly enjoyed it. But the reason why it all worked was due to all the people that worked so hard to make it so great. And I am so thankful to all, everything that everybody did and I’m glad to be home. And all I can say is Houston never looked so good. Thanks.

F: Then she greeted the audience personally. So what’s next for Dr. Lucid?

Shannon: If I have the chance, I would absolutely love to go to Mars and I think that some lucky person right now, that is going to school and they’re studying their math and their science, will have that opportunity. And I hope that I’m still alive to be able to watch them go, because I think that would be an absolutely outstanding adventure.

I think it is very, very important for a person to enjoy what they do as a career, the work that they do for a living. And I think that that should be the primary thing that a person considers when they are looking at what jobs that they want to do.

I don’t think a person should pick a job because you get a lot of money for it. I don’t think we should pick a job because it has a lot of prestige. I don’t think you should pick a job because that’s what your mother and father want you to do.

I think that you ought to have a job that you really enjoy, and that when you wake up in the morning you think, "Oh, great, here’s another day that I can go to work."