Shannon Matilda Wells Lucid[1] (born January 14, 1943) is an American biochemist and retired NASA astronaut.

Due to America's ongoing war with Japan, when she was six weeks old, the family was detained by the Japanese, who had occupied Shanghai at the time.

They returned to the United States on the Swedish ocean liner MS Gripsholm and stayed in the US until the end of the war.

She concluded that she had been born too late for this, but discovered the works of Robert Goddard, the American rocket scientist, and decided that she could become a space explorer.

Shortly after graduating from high school, Wells earned her private pilot's license with instrument and multi-engine ratings and bought a preowned Piper PA-16 Clipper that she used to fly her father to revival meetings.

[4][10] She went on to earn her PhD in biochemistry in 1973, writing her thesis on the Effect of Cholera Toxin on Phosphorylation and Kinase Activity of Intestinal Epithelial Cells and Their Brush Borders under the supervision of A. Chadwick Cox.

[16][17] As one of 208 finalists,[17] Lucid was invited to come to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, for a week of interviews, evaluations and examinations, commencing on August 29, 1977.

The eight women in the group included Rhea Seddon, Anna Sims, Nitza Cintron and Millie Hughes-Wiley.

[23] Astronaut candidates had to complete survival training, be able to swim and scuba dive, and master the basics of aviation safety, as well as the specifics of the spacecraft they would have to fly.

[28] She was at Edwards Air Force Base as a member of the exchange crew for the landing of the STS-5 mission in November 1982.

[29] She was an astronaut support person (ASP) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for the STS-8 mission in August 1983.

[30] Also known as a "Cape Crusader", an ASP was an astronaut who supported vehicle and payload testing at KSC, and strapped the flight crew into their seats before takeoff.

A French astronaut, Patrick Baudry, and a Saudi Arabian prince, Sultan bin Salman Al Saud were assigned as payload specialists.

The seven-day mission was to deploy three communications satellites: Morelos I for Mexico, Arabsat-1B for the Arab League, and Telstar 303 for the United States.

Lucid and Fabian operated the Remote Manipulator System (RMS) to deploy the satellites, which were boosted into geostationary transfer orbits by Payload Assist Module (PAM-D) booster stages.

[38][39] In addition to the satellite deployments, the crew activated the Automated Directional Solidification Furnace (ADSF), six Getaway Specials and participated in biomedical experiments.

[46] On November 30, 1988, NASA announced that Galileo would be deployed by the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-34 mission, which was scheduled for October 12, 1989.

[50] Galileo was successfully deployed six and a half hours into the flight using the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS).

Lucid and Chang-Diaz operated the PM experiment, which used a laptop computer to collect two gigabytes of data from an infrared spectrometer to study the effects of microgravity on minerals.

[48][52] In May 1990 NASA announced that Lucid was assigned to the crew of the STS-43 mission, which was scheduled to be flown in Discovery in April 1991.

The launch was delayed by a day to replace a faulty integrated electronics assembly that controlled the separation of the orbiter and the external tank, and then the countdown was halted with five hours to go due to a faulty main engine controller, and the launch was postponed to August 1.

[54] The crew also conducted 32 physical, material and life science experiments, mostly related to the Extended Duration Orbiter and Space Station Freedom.

[3] These included experiments with the Space Station Heat Pipe Advanced Radiator Element II (SHARE II), the Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultra-Violet (SSBUV) instrument, Tank Pressure Control Equipment (TPCE), and Optical Communications Through Windows (OCTW).

During the fourteen-day flight the crew performed neurovestibular, cardiovascular, cardiopulmonary, metabolic and musculoskeletal medical experiments on themselves and 48 rats.

Along with Seddon, Wolf and Fettman, Lucid collected blood and urine samples from the crew for metabolic experiments.

[62] They performed sixteen engineering tests aboard Columbia and twenty Extended Duration Orbiter Medical Project experiments.

'"[64] In January 1995 Lucid and Blaha joined fellow astronauts Bonnie Dunbar and Norman Thagard for Mir training in Star City.

[4][77] During her stay on Mir, Lucid had spent nearly 400 hours exercising on a stationary bicycle and a treadmill, and was able to stand and walk off Atlantis.

Administrator of NASA Daniel Goldin presented her with a giftwrapped box of M&M's, a gift from President Bill Clinton, since she had told him that she craved them.

[69] 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 until June 16, 2007, when her record for longest duration spaceflight by a woman was exceeded by Sunita Williams on the International Space Station.