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128-612: Onufrienko and Usachev began their mission without a third crew member. American astronaut Shannon Lucid would join them in late March 1996 during STS-76 and depart the Mir 20 mission in September 1996 with STS-79 . On February 21, Soyuz TM-23 launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome with the cosmonauts for Mir Principle Expedition 21. To clear a docking port for the Soyuz TM-23, the Progress M-30

256-553: A capsule communicator (CAPCOM) at Mission Control for numerous Space Shuttle missions , including STS-135 , the final mission of the Space Shuttle program . Lucid announced her retirement from NASA in 2012. Shannon Wells was born in Shanghai, Republic of China, on January 14, 1943, the daughter of Joseph Oscar Wells, a Baptist missionary, and his wife Myrtle, a missionary nurse. Due to America's ongoing war with Japan, when she

384-446: 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. In completing this mission Lucid traveled 121.0 million kilometers (75.2 million miles) in 188 days, 4 hours, 0 minutes. This included 179 days on Mir . Her stay on Mir

512-551: 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. For the STS-41-B mission in February 1984 she was the backup ASP and once again a member of the exchange crew. On November 17, 1983, Lucid was assigned to her first flight, the STS-51-A mission. Tentatively scheduled for October 24, 1984,

640-533: A June 6 EVA lasing about 3 and a half hours. The cosmonauts also replaced a cassette in the Komza experiment on the surface of Spektr. On June 13, the cosmonauts spent over five hours outside Mir, installing and deploying a Rapana girder on the surface of the Kvant module as a platform for installing future experiments on the station exterior. The 5 meter structure was deployed in four sections. Another activity during this EVA

768-475: A Mir 21 crew member at 12:30 UTC on March 24 after a joint "go" from the Russian and U.S. mission control centers. She became the first in a planned continuous U.S. astronaut presence on Mir until 1998. In the joint portion of the mission, the two crews loaded into the station more than 1 ton of U.S. science equipment, almost 2 tons of Russian supplies and 15 containers of water totaling about 1.5 tons. Approximately

896-512: A Shuttle Student Involvement Program (SSIP) experiment that investigated ice crystal formation in zero gravity, and a ground-based Air Force Maui Optical Station (AMOS) experiment. 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. The crew filmed their activities with an IMAX camera. The mission completed 79 orbits of

1024-526: A Space Shuttle mission included a trip to Saudi Arabia. Married women were not permitted to travel to Saudi Arabia without their husband, and Michael Lucid was unavailable, so Lucid decided not to go. A devout Christian, she disapproved of the way Saudi Arabia treated women. When the rest of the crew arrived in Riyadh , her absence was noted. This prompted a call from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to President Ronald Reagan . Lucid went to Saudi Arabia and shook hands with

1152-427: A change in the direction and strength of the local magnetic field . This implied that the spacecraft had crossed the 'wake' of an object, most likely a comet; the object responsible was not immediately identified. In 2000, two teams independently analyzed the same event. The magnetometer team realized that the changes in the direction of the magnetic field mentioned above agreed with the "draping" pattern expected in

1280-455: A combination of Russian and American food. Lucid's return journey to KSC was made aboard Atlantis . The STS-79 mission docked with Mir on September 18, bringing Blaha as her relief, and landed back at KSC on September 26, 1996. One of the catches that released her helmet from the neck ring became stuck, and technicians had to use pliers and a screwdriver to remove it. During her stay on Mir , Lucid had spent nearly 400 hours exercising on

1408-424: A comet's ion, or plasma tail. The magnetometer team looked for likely suspects. No known comets were located near the satellite, but looking further afield, they found that Hyakutake, 500 million km (3.3 AU) away, had crossed Ulysses ' orbital plane on 23 April 1996. The solar wind had a velocity at the time of about 750 km/s (470 mi/s), at which speed it would have taken eight days for

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1536-412: A comet. The comet was discovered on 30 January 1996, by Yuji Hyakutake , an amateur astronomer from southern Japan. He had been searching for comets for years and had moved to Kagoshima Prefecture partly for the dark skies in nearby rural areas. He was using a powerful set of binoculars with 150 mm (6 in) objective lenses to scan the skies on the night of the discovery. This comet

1664-646: A commercial pilot, but was rejected, as women were not yet accepted for training as commercial pilots in the United States. Wells attended Wheaton College in Illinois , where she majored in chemistry . She then transferred to the University of Oklahoma , where she earned her bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1963. She was a teaching assistant in the University of Oklahoma's Department of Chemistry from 1963 to 1964 and

1792-620: A dust tail in addition to the gas tail seen as it passed the Earth. By this time, however, it was close to the Sun and was not seen as easily. It was observed passing perihelion by the SOHO Sun-observing satellite , which also recorded a large coronal mass ejection being formed at the same time. The comet's distance from the Sun at perihelion was 0.23 AU, well inside the orbit of Mercury . After its perihelion passage, Hyakutake faded rapidly and

1920-464: A feature of the training of earlier classes, was continued, but the locations visited changed because the focus was now on observations of the Earth rather than the Moon. 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. Water survival training was conducted with

2048-625: A half hours into the flight using the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS). As this was much less powerful than the Shuttle-Centaur upper stage, Galileo had to employ a gravity assist from Venus and two from Earth, and it took six years instead of two for the Galileo to reach Jupiter. "Both Ellen and I sighed a great sigh of relief, because we figured Galileo was not our concern at that point, because we'd gotten rid of it," Lucid reported. "Happiness

2176-701: A long stay on Mir was not one calculated to appeal to most astronauts: they had to learn Russian and train at Star City for a year to spend several months on board Mir carrying out science experiments with Russian cosmonauts. "I was wondering what it would be like to spend a long period of time in space," Lucid later recalled. "I told everybody I wanted to do it, and they couldn't find anybody else who had volunteered. So they said: 'Well OK, go do it.'" In January 1995 Lucid and Blaha joined fellow astronauts Bonnie Dunbar and Norman Thagard for Mir training in Star City. On March 30, 1995, NASA announced that Lucid would be

2304-409: A more consistent brightening pattern. Thus, all indications suggested Comet Hyakutake would be bright. Besides approaching close to Earth, the comet would also be visible throughout the night to northern hemisphere observers at its closest approach because of its path, passing very close to the pole star . This would be an unusual occurrence, because most comets are close to the Sun in the sky when

2432-470: A parking orbit. It would remain until the departure of Soyuz TM-23 with the homeward-bound Mir 21 crew on September 2. The Soyuz TM-24 docked at the -X port on August 19. The new arrivals were Commander Valery Korzun , Flight Engineer Alexander Kaleri and Cosmonaut Researcher Claudie Andre-Deshays of the French Space Agency (CNES). Andre-Deshays accompanied the Mir 22 crew for a 2-week program of

2560-402: A photograph taken on January 1, when the comet was about 2.4 AU from the Sun and had a magnitude of 13.3. When the first calculations of the comet's orbit were made, scientists realized that it was going to pass just 0.1 AU from Earth on 25 March. Only four comets in the previous century had passed closer. Comet Hale–Bopp was already being discussed as a possible " great comet ";

2688-400: A place from where comets with orbital periods of millions of years come. Comets entering the inner Solar System for the first time may brighten rapidly before fading as they near the Sun, because a layer of highly volatile material evaporates. This was the case with Comet Kohoutek in 1973; it was initially touted as potentially spectacular, but only appeared moderately bright. Older comets show

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2816-529: A prolonged mission aboard the Russian space station Mir in 1996, and is the only American woman to have stayed on Mir . From 1996 to 2007, Lucid held the record for the longest duration spent in space by an American and by a woman. She was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in December 1996, making her the tenth person and the first woman to be accorded the honor. Lucid is a graduate of

2944-573: A senior laboratory technician at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in Oklahoma City , from 1964 to 1966. She then became a research chemist at Kerr-McGee , an oil company there. At Kerr-McGee she met Michael F. Lucid, a fellow research chemist. They married in 1967, and their first child, Kawai Dawn, was born in 1968. Afterward, Lucid left Kerr-McGee and returned to the University of Oklahoma as graduate assistant in

3072-524: A set of scientific investigations collectively called Cassiopee. She would return to Earth with the Mir 21 crew. Andre-Deshays, Korzun and Kaleri worked on PHYSIOLAB, a study of cardiovascular physiology, COGNILAB, tests of neurosensory system responses in microgravity, FERTILE, egg-based studies to determine the role of gravity on embryonic development , ALICE II, experiments in fluid dynamics and CASTOR, analyses of structural dynamics . Onufrienko, Usachev and Andre-Deshays departed Mir on September 2 in

3200-864: A short cameo in the 1998 film Armageddon . From 2002 to 2003, she served as Chief Scientist of NASA . Starting in 2005, she served as lead CAPCOM on the Planning (overnight) shift at the Mission Control for sixteen Space Shuttle missions , including STS-135 , the final mission. On January 31, 2012, she announced her retirement from NASA. Lucid retired from NASA to take care of her husband Mike, who had dementia . He died on December 25, 2014. She later wrote about this experience in her book No Sugar Added: One Family's Saga of Dementia and Caretaking (2019). She wrote about her experiences on Mir in Tumbleweed: Six Months Living on Mir (2020). Lucid

3328-572: A small leak in one of Atlantis's three redundant hydraulic systems , but after the system was shut off when Atlantis reached orbit, the leak stopped. The approximately 20% loss of that one system's hydraulic fluid would not adversely affect the mission because the hydraulic system would not be used again until the descent phase. During the first two days of the mission, Atlantis Commander Kevin Chilton and Pilot Richard Searfoss began jet firings to guide Atlantis's journey toward Mir. The crew prepared for

3456-462: A ton of excess equipment, waste and science payload was transferred from Mir to Atlantis. From their vantage point in orbit, the crews were treated to a good view of the comet Hyakutake . Some of the spacecraft hardware items brought up by Atlantis were replacement gyrodyne, a seat liner kit for Lucid to be placed in a Soyuz module if emergency return to Earth was required and three Russian storage batteries which had been replenished on Earth. Some of

3584-580: A two-volume set to her mother in space?" She arranged for the second volume to be sent on the next Progress resupply freighter. She left her books on Mir for later astronaut visitors, but they became inaccessible after the Progress M-34 collision in June 1997. Thagard had warned Lucid about the Russians' fondness for jellied fish and borscht . She brought a supply of M&M's and jello with her, and lived on

3712-472: Is a comet discovered on 31 January 1996. It was dubbed the Great Comet of 1996 ; its passage to within 0.1  AU (15 Gm) of the Earth on 25 March was one of the closest cometary approaches of the previous 200 years. Reaching an apparent visual magnitude of zero and spanning nearly 80°, Hyakutake appeared very bright in the night sky and was widely seen around the world. The comet temporarily upstaged

3840-414: Is the first comet to have an X-ray emission detected, which is most likely the result of ionised solar wind particles interacting with neutral atoms in the coma of the comet. The Ulysses spacecraft fortuitously crossed the comet's tail at a distance of more than 500 million km (3.3 AU; 310 million mi) from the nucleus , showing that Hyakutake had the longest tail known for

3968-584: The 3613th Combat Crew Training Squadron at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida and parasail training at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma. On August 31, 1979, NASA announced that the 35 astronaut candidates had completed their training and evaluation, and were now officially astronauts, qualified for selection on space flight crews. Their training, which had been expected to last eighteen to twenty-four months, had been completed in fourteen. That of subsequent classes

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4096-761: The Arab League , and Telstar 303 for the United States. The satellites were launched on successive days during the first three days of the mission. 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. Lucid also used the RMS to deploy the Spartan (Shuttle Pointed Autonomous Research Tool for Astronomy) satellite, which performed 17 hours of X-ray astronomy experiments while separated from

4224-570: The Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949. They moved to Lubbock, Texas , and then settled in Bethany, Oklahoma , the family's original hometown, where Wells graduated from Bethany High School in 1960. She was fascinated by stories of the American frontier and wanted to become an explorer. She concluded that she had been born too late for this, but discovered the works of Robert Goddard ,

4352-678: The Extended Duration Orbiter and Space Station Freedom . 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). There was also an auroral photography experiment (APE-B), a protein crystal growth experiment, testing of

4480-758: The Hubble Space Telescope and rendezvous proximity operations. 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. The exchange crew took over from the flight crew after they had landed, and handled the post-flight activities. She was an astronaut support person (ASP) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for the STS-8 mission in August 1983. Also known as

4608-523: The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan the following morning. Later that day, the discovery was confirmed by independent observations. At the time of its discovery, the comet was shining at magnitude 11.0 and had a coma approximately 2.5  arcminutes across. It was approximately 2  astronomical units (AU) from the Sun . Later, a precovery image of the comet was found on

4736-507: The University of Oklahoma , where she earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1963, a master's degree in biochemistry in 1970, and a PhD in biochemistry in 1973. She was a laboratory technician at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation from 1964 to 1966, a research chemist at Kerr-McGee from 1966 to 1968, and a research associate at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation from 1973 to 1978. In 1978, Lucid

4864-422: The carbon dioxide removal system. On July 26, the crew activated the backup oxygen system on August 1. On August 1 at 16:45 UTC, Progress M-31 left the -X port for destructive reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. Launched on July 31 with fresh supplies and hardware for the upcoming Cassiopee mission experiments, Progress M-32 docked at the -X port on August 2. The Mir 21 crew began setting up experiments for

4992-537: The diameter of a full moon (half a degree) every 30 minutes. Observers estimated its magnitude as around 0, and tail lengths of up to 80 degrees were reported. Its coma, now close to the zenith for observers at mid-northern latitudes , appeared approximately 1.5 to 2 degrees across, roughly four times the diameter of the full moon. The comet's head appeared distinctly blue-green, possibly due to emissions from diatomic carbon (C 2 ) combined with sunlight reflected from dust grains. Because Hyakutake

5120-450: 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. Unfavorable weather prompted yet another 24-hour delay. Atlantis lifted off on August 2. The crew deployed TDRS-E without incident using the IUS. The crew also conducted 32 physical, material and life science experiments, mostly related to

5248-496: The American rocket scientist , and decided that she could become a space explorer. Wells sold her bicycle to buy a telescope so she could look at the stars, and began building her own rockets. 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 . She applied for jobs as

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5376-530: The Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology , where she pursued a master's degree in biochemistry . She sat for her final examinations two days after the birth of her second daughter, Shandara Michelle, in 1970. 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

5504-529: The Docking Module, the astronauts also evaluated new tether hooks and foot restraints that could be used on both Mir and Shuttle Orbiter exteriors, prototypes of International Space Station EVA equipment. They also retrieved the Mir-mounted camera that had been used in docking alignment during STS-74 in November 1995. The STS-76 and Mir 21 crews bid each other farewell on the morning of March 28. They closed

5632-592: The Earth, traveling 3.2 million kilometers (2 million miles) in 119 hours and 39 minutes before landing at Edwards Air Force Base on October 23. 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 mission was commanded by John E. Blaha , with Michael A. Baker as the pilot and Lucid, G. David Low , and James C. Adamson as

5760-551: The Earth, traveling five million miles in 336 hours, 13 minutes and 1 second. Landing was at Edwards Air Force Base, California. On completion of this flight, Lucid had logged 838 hours and 54 minutes in space. In 1992 the United States and Russia reached an agreement on cooperation in space so that Russian cosmonauts could fly on the Space Shuttles, and American astronauts on the Russian Mir space station . The prospect of

5888-508: The July 31 launch of STS-79 , the fourth mission Atlantis would dock with Mir, until mid-September. In a post-flight discovery of STS-78, it was found that hot gas had seeped into the joints of the boosters used in STS-78 launch in June. An investigation found that the most probable cause of the leakage was use of a new adhesive and cleaning fluid that was also used on the boosters for STS-79. Although

6016-509: The Mir environment and provided data for the development of advanced life support systems and the Tissue Equivalent Proportional Counter (TEPC), a radiation-dosage measurement device. On August 17, Soyuz TM-24 was launched from Baikonur with the new crew for Mir Principal Expedition 22. To free the -X port for docking of the approaching Soyuz, Progress M-32 was undocked on August 18 under automatic control and moved to

6144-571: The Priroda systems and troubleshot the battery problems. A new Progress cargo spacecraft was launched from Baiknour on May 5 and docked under control of the Kurs automatic system at the -X port of the Mir on May 7. For the first time in the station's history, all ports of the base block were occupied at the same time. The crew began unloading the vehicle that week, in addition to continuing their science experiments and Priroda activation. They successfully tested

6272-894: The Queen's University Experiment in Liquid Diffusion (QUELD), using a furnace to analyze the formation of alloys in space, the Candle Flame in Microgravity (CFM), to study the physiochemical processes of combustion, the Anticipatory Postural Activity (POSA), to measure how muscles work in microgravity, the Forced Flow Framespread test to examine the flame-spreading properties of solid fuels, the Solid Sorbent Air Sampler for Volatile Organic Compounds to evaluation

6400-686: The Russian-U.S. crew was provided 4 days ahead of schedule by TsUP . A group of NASA science experts in Moscow served as consultants on science activities. The first week after Atlantis' departure, the crew focused on the Optizon Liquid Phase Sintering Experiment (OLiPSE), processing 70 samples of different metals at high temperatures. The crew also conducted life sciences research and Earth observation photography. Space Acceleration Measurement System (SAMS) monitors were placed throughout

6528-479: The Soyuz TM-23 spacecraft and safely landed in Central Asia. Onufrienko and Usachev had been in space 194 days, Andre-Deshays 17 days. 50°17′N 70°50′E  /  50.283°N 70.833°E  / 50.283; 70.833 Shannon Lucid Shannon Matilda Wells Lucid (born January 14, 1943) is an American biochemist and retired NASA astronaut . She has flown in space five times, including

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6656-739: The Space Shuttle, while Fabian handled its retrieval 45 hours later. In addition to the satellite deployments, the crew activated the Automated Directional Solidification Furnace (ADSF), six Getaway Specials and participated in biomedical experiments. Discovery landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California on June 24. The mission was accomplished in 112 orbits of the Earth, traveling 4.7 million kilometers (2.9 million miles) in 169 hours and 39 minutes (just over one week). The publicity tour that usually followed

6784-481: The Space Station Freedom and subsequent long-duration space flights. Fellow TFNG Rhea Seddon was designated as the mission payload commander , with David Wolf , like Seddon a medical doctor, as the other mission specialist. Originally scheduled as one mission, the number of Spacelab Life Sciences objectives and experiments had grown until it was split into two missions, the first of which, STS-40 /SLS-1,

6912-616: The Spacehab module in the Orbiter payload bay. The Biorack contained eleven experiments to investigate the effects of microgravity and cosmic radiation on plants, animal tissues, bacteria , and insects. The various experiments were designed by France , Germany , the U.S. , Switzerland and the Netherlands . In preparation for the EVA, Atlantis's cabin air pressure was lowered from 14.7 to 10.2 psia.

7040-450: The Sun, which would have evaporated these volatile molecules. Hyakutake's ices must have formed at temperatures of 20  K or less, indicating that it probably formed in a denser-than-average interstellar cloud. The amount of deuterium in the comet's water ices was determined through spectroscopic observations. It was found that the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (known as the D/H ratio)

7168-627: The Svet facility for the Fundamental Biology Greenhouse plant experiment during the latter part of July. A temporary limitation of power in Kristall caused a delay in the first planting, but was solved when ground planners instructed the crew to plug an extension cord into the Spektr's power supply. Station maintenance during the last week of July included replacement of a vacuum valve assembly on

7296-451: The alignment. At 12:34 UTC on March 24, he achieved contact, adding Atlantis to a space station complex that then totaled 230 tons. After confirmation of docking, leak checks and pressurization of the docking vestibule, the hatches were opened and the two crews greeted each other. Shortly afterward, the Atlantis crew installed ducts to aid in circulating air between the two spacecraft during the docking phase. Shannon Lucid officially became

7424-563: The array unfurled upon command from inside the station. All the crew members exchanged greetings with the astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-77 and they held a conference with U.S. and Russian news media. On May 30, Onufrienko and Usachev installed the Modular Optoelectronic Multispectral Scanner (MOMS), a German remote sensing camera, on the Priroda module. The camera, designed to collect Earth atmosphere and environment data, had been flown earlier on two Shuttle missions, STS-7 in June 1983 and STS-41B in February 1984. After

7552-402: The astronomical community eventually realised that Hyakutake might also become spectacular because of its close approach. Moreover, Comet Hyakutake's orbit meant that it had last been to the inner Solar System approximately 17,000 years earlier. Because it had probably passed close to the Sun several times before, the approach in 1996 would not be a maiden arrival from the Oort cloud ,

7680-464: The beginning of March, rising to 3 × 10  kg/s as the comet approached perihelion. During the same period, dust ejection velocities increased from 50 m/s to 500 m/s. Observations of material being ejected from the nucleus allowed astronomers to establish its rotation period. As the comet passed the Earth, a large puff or blob of material was observed being ejected in the sunward direction every 6.23 hours. A second smaller ejection with

7808-492: The bioserve / instrumentation technology associates materials dispersion apparatus (BIMDA), investigations into polymer membrane processing (IPMP), the space acceleration measurement system (SAMS), a solid surface combustion experiment (SSCE), use of the ultraviolet plume imager (UVPI); and the Air Force Maui optical site (AMOS) experiment. Atlantis performed 142 orbits of the Earth, traveling 6.0 million kilometers (3.7 million miles) in 213 hours and 21 minutes. STS-43

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7936-425: The boosters were judged safe to fly, a decision was made to replace them in order to further study the J-joint failure and improve the safety margin of the joint. On July 15, Lucid surpassed the space duration record for a U.S. astronaut set by Norm Thagard with his 115 days on Mir Principal Expedition 18 in 1996. With the delay to STS-79, her flight record would be even longer than anticipated. The crew assembled

8064-406: The comet was one of the brightest objects in the night sky, and its tail stretched 35 degrees. The comet had a notably bluish-green colour. The closest approach occurred on 25 March at a distance of 0.1  AU (15 million  km ; 39  LD ). Hyakutake was moving so rapidly across the night sky that its movement could be detected against the stars in just a few minutes; it covered

8192-411: The comet's orbit predict it will not return to the inner Solar System again for approximately 70,000 years. The Ulysses spacecraft made an unexpected pass through the tail of the comet on 1 May 1996. Evidence of the encounter was not noticed until 1998. Astronomers analysing old data found that Ulysses ' instruments had detected a large drop in the number of protons passing, as well as

8320-399: The comets are at their brightest, leading to the comets appearing in a sky not completely dark. Hyakutake became visible to the naked eye in early March 1996. By mid-March, the comet was still fairly unremarkable, shining at 4th magnitude with a tail about 5  degrees long. As it neared its closest approach to Earth, it rapidly became brighter, and its tail grew in length. By March 24,

8448-418: The course of her stay aboard Mir , Lucid performed numerous life science and physical science experiments. She lit candles to study the behavior of fire in a microgravity environment; studied the way that quail embryos developed in their shells; grew protein crystals; and cultivated wheat in a tiny greenhouse. She injected herself with an immune system stimulant and collected blood and saliva samples to study

8576-407: The crescent pointing away from the Sun. The cause of the X-ray emission is thought to be a combination of two mechanisms. Interactions between energetic solar wind particles and cometary material evaporating from the nucleus is likely to contribute significantly to this effect. Reflection of solar X-rays is seen in other Solar System objects such as the Moon , but a simple calculation assuming even

8704-406: The day. Along with Seddon, Wolf and Fettman, Lucid collected blood and urine samples from the crew for metabolic experiments. They also drew blood from the tails of the rats to measure how weightlessness affected their red blood cell counts. They performed sixteen engineering tests aboard Columbia and twenty Extended Duration Orbiter Medical Project experiments. The mission completed 225 orbits of

8832-531: The disaster was the Galileo project , an unmanned probe to Jupiter, which lost both its launch window and its ride due to the cancelation of the Shuttle-Centaur project. 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. The mission was commanded by Donald E. Williams , with pilot Michael J. McCulley and Lucid, Ellen S. Baker and Franklin Chang-Diaz as mission specialists. The launch

8960-418: The docking by checking out communications equipment and docking and alignment aids. They also activated Spacehab and began orbital operations for Biorack experiments. Mission Specialists Linda Godwin and Michael Clifford checked out the space suits and equipment for their upcoming EVA. On mission day 3, when Atlantis was within 8 miles of the station, Chilton fired the orbital maneuvering system engines in

9088-506: The effects of microgravity on the immune system. In her free time, she read books. One novel she enjoyed immensely was The Mirror of Her Dreams , but she reached the end only to find that it ended on a cliffhanger . "I floated there, alone in Spectra, in stunned disbelief, holding only volume one," she later recalled. "I was stranded, the impossibility of running to the local bookstore forefront in my mind   ... How could my daughter have done this to me? Who would send only one volume of

9216-498: The electrical system. No problems were encountered on the April 26 docking of the new module at the -X port at the front of the Mir base block. On April 27, from inside the station, the Mir 21 crew controlled Priroda's repositioning with the Lyappa arm to the +Z docking port, directly across from the Kristall module. Thus the Mir complex, with its six habitable modules and Docking Module, attained its final basic configuration. Henceforth,

9344-527: The existing classrooms, so for classroom instruction they were split into two groups, red and blue, led by Rick Hauck and John Fabian respectively. Classroom training was given on a wide variety of subjects, including an introduction to the Space Shuttle program , space flight engineering, astronomy, orbital mechanics , ascent and entry aerodynamics and space flight physiology . Those accustomed to military and academic environments were surprised that subjects were taught, but not tested. Training in geology,

9472-451: The five-hour and 20-minute EVA, they inflated an aluminum and nylon model of a Pepsi Cola can, which they filmed against the backdrop of Earth. The soft drink company paid for the procedure and planned to use it in a television commercial. On May 25, in their third spacewalk of the mission, the cosmonauts were outside the station for five hours and 43 minutes, completing the solar array installation on Kvant. After all connections were made,

9600-518: The fourteen-day flight the crew performed neurovestibular, cardiovascular, cardiopulmonary, metabolic and musculoskeletal medical experiments on themselves and 48 rats. The crew investigated the phenomenon of bone density loss. They also studied the effects of microgravity on their sensory perception, and the mechanism of space adaptation syndrome . To study this, on the second day of the mission Lucid and Fettman wore headsets, known as accelerometer recording units, which recorded their head movements during

9728-531: The hatches to their spacecraft, and the astronauts began preparations for undocking and return to Earth. With the steering jets to both spacecraft shut down, Atlantis separated from the Mir Docking Module. Then Chilton reactivated the jets and slowly moved away from Mir. At 600 feet out, he began a fly-around, circled the station twice while the crews took pictures of each other's spacecraft, then moved to another orbit. The daily flight plan, or cyclogram, for

9856-594: The hatches were closed between Mir and Atlantis and Atlantis and Spacehab throughout the EVA to allow for sustained cabin depressurization. The Mir crew, including Lucid, stayed inside Mir and the Atlantis crew stayied inside the Orbiter cabin, with Ronald Sega coordinating the space walk activities from inside. Attached to their regular portable life support system backpack, Godwin and Clifford donned new self-contained backpacks with propulsion systems to allow enough free-flight capability to return an un-tethered astronaut to

9984-501: The highest X-ray reflectivity possible per molecule or dust grain is not able to explain the majority of the observed flux from Hyakutake, as the comet's atmosphere is very tenuous and diffuse. Observations of comet C/1999 S4 (LINEAR) with the Chandra satellite in 2000 determined that X-rays observed from that comet were produced predominantly by charge exchange collisions between highly charged carbon , oxygen and nitrogen minor ions in

10112-596: The human immune system. The crew also monitored various aspects of the spacecraft environment. They took air samples in Spektr and the core module using the Solid Sorbent Air Sampler (SSAS) and the Grab Sample Container (GSC). They recorded effects of spacecraft motion with the SAMS equipment and began evaluation of the Microgravity Isolation Mount (MIM). On July 12, NASA announced the decision to postpone

10240-455: The inner Solar System was the discovery that it was emitting X-rays , with observations made using the ROSAT satellite revealing very strong X-ray emission. This was the first time a comet had been seen to do so, but astronomers soon found that almost every comet they looked at was emitting X-rays. The emission from Hyakutake was brightest in a crescent shape surrounding the nucleus with the ends of

10368-536: The installation, Lucid activated the system by remote command from inside the station. During the five-hour EVA, the cosmonauts also installed a new handrail on the Kvant-2 to facilitate movements in future spacewalks. The Particle Impact Experiment and the Mir Sample Return Experiment, U.S. space science experiments brought to orbit inside Priroda, were installed on the exterior of the Kvant 2 module during

10496-912: The king, but she stayed for only one day. After the STS-51-G mission, Lucid was assigned to Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) duty. She served as the CAPCOM for the STS-51-J mission in October 1985, the STS-61-A mission in November 1985, STS-61-B mission in November and December 1985, and the STS-61-C mission in January 1986. The January 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster later that month halted Space Shuttle operations for 32 months while NASA conducted investigations and remediation. Flight crews were stood down. One consequence of

10624-529: The leak and repair was not immediately scheduled. Onufrienko and Usachev left the station early on May 20 to remove the Mir Cooperative Solar Array from its stowed position on the exterior of the Docking Module at the base of Kristall. They used the new Strela boom installed during their March 15 EVA to reach the array and move it to the Kvant module, where they positioned its cables in preparation for final installation during their next EVA. During

10752-521: The mid- to late-1980s and was built and assembled in the Khrunichev plant between 1989 and 1991. The module's two propulsion systems included one for orbit correction during the flight to Mir and rendezvous with Mir and one was for berthing and stabilization during the docking phase. The Priroda module included an unpressurized instrument compartment and an instrument/payload compartment. The Kurs automatic docking system on Priroda worked flawlessly, as did

10880-401: The mission specialists. The objective of the mission was to deploy TDRS-E , a communications satellite that would form part of NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System . The launch date was postponed to July 23, and the orbiter was changed to Atlantis . The launch was delayed by a day to replace a faulty integrated electronics assembly that controlled the separation of the orbiter and

11008-503: The mission would be commanded by Daniel Brandenstein , with pilot John O. Creighton and Lucid, Fabian and Steven R. Nagel as mission specialists. She would be the last of the six women in the TFNG group to fly. Due to slippages, the crew was reassigned to the STS-51-D mission in August 1984. This mission had a different payload, and it was scheduled to be launched on March 18, 1985. The mission

11136-401: The module would be in place when Lucid arrived at Mir, had been moved forward at least twice: once because of late delivery from the Khrunichev factory and once because a commercial Proton launch in early April took precedence. But on April 23, Priroda was launched from Baikonur atop a SL-13 Proton rocket for a three-day orbital trip to Mir. One of the two battery-powered electrical systems on

11264-455: The much anticipated Comet Hale–Bopp , which was approaching the inner Solar System at the time. Hyakutake is a long-period comet that passed perihelion on 1 May 1996. Before its most recent passage through the Solar System, its orbital period was about 17,000 years, but the gravitational perturbation of the giant planets has increased this period to 70,000 years. This

11392-493: The names of the 35 successful candidates, of whom 20 were mission specialist candidates. Of the six women in this first class with female astronauts, Lucid was the only one who was a mother at the time of being selected. George Abbey , the Director of Flight Crew Operations at JSC and the chairman of the selection panel, later stated that this was not taken into consideration during the selection process. Group 8's name for itself

11520-405: The new Mir interface-to-payload systems (MIPS) hardware for downlinking data to the ground and replaced three nickel-cadmium batteries in the Priroda power system. However, a power controller for the system failed, and ground controllers began monitoring and controlling battery charging. The crew finally isolated the coolant loop leak in the core module, but there was no health risk associated with

11648-500: The new supplies and equipment for onboard experiments included replacement hardware for the Mir glovebox stowage experiments, Mir electric field characterization hardware to measure radio interference inside and around the complex, and a liquid phase sintering experiment that would use the Optizon furnace to bond different metals. On flight days 4, 5 and 7, the crew worked on the Biorack in

11776-428: The nucleus ( Halley's Comet is about 15 km (9.3 mi) across, while Comet Hale–Bopp was about 60 km (37 mi) across) implies that Hyakutake must have been very active to become as bright as it did. Most comets undergo outgassing from a small proportion of their surface, but most or all of Hyakutake's surface seemed to have been active. The dust production rate was estimated to be about 2 × 10  kg/s at

11904-498: The record for spaceflight duration by a Western European. On March 15, Onufrienko and Usachev exited the Kvant 2 EVA hatch for their first space walk. Because the existing Strela could not be used to reach the Kristall module in its current location, they installed a second Strela boom on the Mir base block, on the side opposite the Strela already in place. In the 5-hour, 51-minute EVA, they also prepared cables and electrical connectors on

12032-453: The same time. The relative abundances of chemical elements detected indicated that the object responsible was definitely a comet. Based on the Ulysses encounter, the comet's tail is known to have been at least 570 million km (360 million miles; 3.8 AU) long. This is almost twice as long as the previous longest-known cometary tail, that of the Great Comet of 1843 , which

12160-483: The second astronaut to stay aboard Mir , after Thagard, who arrived on the space station on March 16. Lucid's mission to Mir commenced on March 22, 1996, with liftoff from KSC aboard Atlantis on the STS-76 mission. Atlantis docked with Mir on March 24, and Lucid became the first American woman to live on the station. She joined cosmonauts Yuri Onufriyenko and Yuri Usachov , neither of whom spoke English. During

12288-594: The shape of the complex would change only temporarily, with dockings by Progress, Soyuz and Space Shuttle Orbiter spacecraft. Because of concern about possible sulfur dioxide leaks from the malfunctioning battery system, a test of the modules' atmosphere was made before the crew entered. Once inside Priroda, the crew's first task was to unbolt the batteries, cap their connectors and place them in plastic bags. The 168 batteries would later be placed in Progress M-31 for disposal. The crew then connected Mir power sources to

12416-486: The solar wind, and neutral water, oxygen and hydrogen in the comet's coma. Radar results from the Arecibo Observatory indicated that the comet nucleus was about 4.8 km (3 mi) across, and surrounded by a flurry of pebble-sized particles ejected at a few metres per second. This size measurement corresponded well with indirect estimates using infrared emission and radio observations. The small size of

12544-482: The spacecraft dropped off-line, eliminating the backup power source for the automatic docking system. If the primary electrical system had also malfunctioned, the Mir crew would have immediately initiated a manual docking. The Priroda module had a mass of 19.700 kg, a length of ~12 m, a max diameter of ~4.35m and a pressurized volume of ~66 cubic meters. it was the last of the six permanent habitable Mir modules. Priroda was, like Spektr, designed by RKK Energia in

12672-468: The spacecraft in an emergency. The device, called the Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER), was designed for EVAs on docked vehicles which would be unable to quickly retrieve a drifting spacewalker. The backpack was test-flown on STS-64 in September 1994. On March 27, Godwin and Clifford performed their 6-hour EVA in Atlantis' cargo bay and on the exterior of the Mir Docking Module. Their major task

12800-550: The station over to Mir 21, including familiarization with the current conditions of the projects and the station itself. Two days before the return flight, a water leak appeared in the Mir base block, but the cosmonauts were able to repair it. Gidzenko, Avdeyev and Reiter donned their Sokol launch and reentry suits and entered the Soyuz TM-22 on February 29, 1996. They landed safely about 105 km from Arkalyk. Their mission lasted 179 days, 1 hour and 42 minutes. Reiter then held

12928-433: The station to record movement that might disrupt experiments. Radiation dosimeters in various locations provided another measurement of the station's internal environment. A leak in a coolant loop in the core module was detected in mid-April, but the crew was unable to find the exact location. That loop was turned off and the alternate loop was used. The long-awaited launch of Priroda, earlier announced for March 10 so that

13056-587: The supervision of A. Chadwick Cox. She then returned to the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation as a research associate. A third child, Michael Kermit, was born in 1975. On July 8, 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) issued a call for applications for at least 15 pilot candidates and 15 mission specialist candidates. For the first time, new selections would be considered astronaut candidates rather than fully-fledged astronauts until they finished training and evaluation, which

13184-445: The surface of the Kvant module for the May installation of the Mir Cooperative Solar Array. The array was stored on the surface of the Docking Module that was installed on Kristall last November. The U.S. Space Shuttle Orbiter Atlantis was launched from Kennedy Space Center on March 22 at 11:00 UTC for its sixteenth flight as STS-76 . During the ascent phase, flight controllers detected

13312-499: The tail to be carried out to where the spacecraft was situated at 3.73 AU, approximately 45 degrees out of the ecliptic plane. The orientation of the ion tail inferred from the magnetic field measurements agreed with the source lying in Comet Hyakutake's orbital plane. The other team, working on data from the spacecraft's ion composition spectrometer, discovered a sudden large spike in detected levels of ionised particles at

13440-533: The terminal phase initiation burn. As the two spacecraft completed another orbit, Atlantis approached Mir from below along the R-bar, using rendezvous radar to track its approach rate and measure its distance. Chilton took manual control at one-half mile below the Mir, executing a 180 degree yaw rotation to align Atlantis with the Docking Module on Kristall. He used the ODS centerline camera as an aid in refining and maintaining

13568-453: The upcoming mission. They also refurbished the gyrodyne system, maintaining station attitude by thruster firings from August 5 through the 7th while the gyrodynes were not available. The seeds of the first crop of dwarf wheat were planted in the Greenhouse on August 5. Earth observations were made of areas of the United States, Europe and Asia. Lucid continued to run experiments, including

13696-453: Was "TFNG". The abbreviation was deliberately ambiguous; for public purposes, it stood for "Thirty-Five New Guys", but within the group itself, it was known to stand for the military phrase, " the fucking new guy ", used to denote newcomers to a military unit . Much of the first eight months of their training was in the classroom. Because there were so many of them, the TFNGs did not fit easily into

13824-425: Was 2 AU long. This record was broken in 2002 by comet 153P/Ikeya–Zhang , which had a tail-length of at least 7.46 AU . Terrestrial observers found ethane and methane in the comet, the first time either of these gases had been detected in a comet. Chemical analysis showed that the abundances of ethane and methane were roughly equal, which may imply that its ices formed in interstellar space, away from

13952-458: Was about 3 × 10 , which compares to a value in Earth's oceans of about 1.5 × 10 . It has been proposed that cometary collisions with Earth might have supplied a large proportion of the water in the oceans, but the high D–H ratio measured in Hyakutake and other comets such as Hale–Bopp and Halley's Comet have caused problems for this theory. One of the great surprises of Hyakutake's passage through

14080-420: Was actually the second Comet Hyakutake; Hyakutake had discovered comet C/1995 Y1 several weeks earlier. While re-observing his first comet (which never became visible to the naked eye ) and the surrounding patch of sky, Hyakutake was surprised to find another comet in almost the same position as the first had been. Hardly believing a second discovery so soon after the first, Hyakutake reported his observation to

14208-409: Was an empty payload bay and we got happier and happier as the IUS and Galileo went further away from us." The mission also conducted a five-day Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SSBUV) experiment carried in the cargo bay, and experiments related to growth hormone crystal distribution (GHCD) and polymer morphology (PM), a sensor technology experiment (STEX), a mesoscale lightning experiment (MLE),

14336-425: Was at its brightest for only a few days, it did not have time to permeate the public imagination in the way that Comet Hale–Bopp did the following year. Many European observers in particular did not see the comet at its peak because of unfavourable weather conditions. After its close approach to the Earth, the comet faded to about 2nd magnitude. It reached perihelion on 1 May 1996, brightening again and exhibiting

14464-613: Was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in December 1996 (for her mission to Mir ), making her the tenth person and first woman to be given this honor. She was also awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal in 1985, 1989 (twice), 1991, 1993 and 1996; the NASA Exceptional Service Medal in 1988, 1990, 1992 and 2003 (twice); and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1994 and 1997. She

14592-410: Was delayed for five days due to a faulty Space Shuttle main engine controller, and then for an additional day due to bad weather. Atlantis lifted off from KSC on October 18. As the lead mission specialist, Lucid was primarily responsible for the Galileo spacecraft, and initiated its deployment by pressing a button to separate Galileo from Atlantis . Galileo was successfully deployed six and

14720-615: Was expected to take two years. The enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 reinforced the promise of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to address the persistent and entrenched employment discrimination against women, African Americans and minority groups in American society. While they had never been explicitly precluded from becoming NASA astronauts, none had ever been selected either. This time, minorities and women were encouraged to apply. Lucid's

14848-417: Was flown in June 1991. The rest of the crew were not named until August 27, 1992. Blaha was designated the mission commander, with pilot Richard A. Searfoss and William S. McArthur Jr. as a fourth mission specialist. A payload specialist, Martin J. Fettman , was assigned to the mission on October 29. The Space Shuttle Columbia with SLS-2 on board lifted off from KSC on October 18, 1993. During

14976-666: Was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1990, the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame in 1993, the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1998, and the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2002 Discover magazine recognized her as one of the fifty most important women in science . Comet Hyakutake Comet Hyakutake ( formally designated C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake) )

15104-454: Was lost to naked-eye visibility by the end of May. Its orbital path carried it rapidly into the southern skies, but following perihelion it became much less monitored. The last known observation of the comet took place on November 2. Hyakutake had passed through the inner Solar System approximately 17,000 years ago; gravitational interactions with the gas giants during its 1996 passage stretched its orbit greatly, and barycentric fits to

15232-635: Was manual deployment of the Travers radar antenna on the exterior of Priroda. The large antenna had failed to deploy fully by command from inside the station. In addition to assisting the cosmonauts during EVAs from inside the station, Lucid continued activating equipment, such as the Biotechnology System Facility for long-term biotechnology studies and conducting experiments such as the Humoral Immunity experiment to study spaceflight effects on

15360-481: Was not expected to last so long but her return was delayed twice, extending her stay by about six weeks. 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 . Lucid had

15488-620: Was one of the first of 8,079 applications received. As one of 208 finalists, 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. She was part of the third group of twenty applicants to be interviewed, and the first one that included women. The eight women in the group included Rhea Seddon , Anna Sims , Nitza Cintron and Millie Hughes-Wiley . On January 16, 1978, NASA announced

15616-493: Was recruited by NASA for astronaut training with NASA Astronaut Group 8 , the first class of astronauts to include women. She flew in space five times: on STS-51-G , STS-34 , STS-43 , STS-58 , and her mission to Mir , for which Lucid traveled to the space station on Space Shuttle Atlantis with STS-76 and returned six months later with STS-79 . She was the NASA Chief Scientist from 2002 to 2003 and

15744-584: Was scrubbed just three weeks before the launch date. In May 1985 the crew was reassigned to the STS-51-G mission. A French astronaut, Patrick Baudry , and a Saudi Arabian prince, Sultan bin Salman Al Saud were assigned as payload specialists . STS-51-G lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at KSC in the Space Shuttle Discovery on June 17, 1985. The seven-day mission was to deploy three communications satellites: Morelos I for Mexico, Arabsat-1B for

15872-532: Was shortened to twelve months. Each of the new astronauts specialized in certain aspects of the Space Shuttle program, providing astronaut support and input. Lucid was involved with Spacelab 1 crew training, and the development of the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL) at JSC and Rockwell International 's Flight Systems Laboratory (FSL) in Downey, California . She also worked on

16000-589: Was six weeks old, the family was detained by the Japanese, who had occupied Shanghai at the time . The three of them were imprisoned in an internment camp but were released during a prisoner exchange later that year. They returned to the United States on the Swedish ocean liner MS  Gripsholm and stayed in the US until the end of the war. After the war ended, the family returned to China but decided to leave again after

16128-494: Was the eighth mission to land at KSC, and the first one scheduled to do so since STS-61-C in January 1986. On December 6, 1991, Lucid was assigned to STS-58 , the Spacelab Life Sciences   2 (SLS-2) mission. This was the second mission dedicated to the study of human and animal physiology on Earth and in spaceflight. The techniques developed for this flight were intended to be precursors of those to be conducted on

16256-536: Was to secure four experiment canisters to handrails on the docking Module. The experiments, collectively called the Mir Environmental Effects Payload (MEEP), were designed to record data on orbital debris, and to test potential International Space Station materials by exposing them to the low Earth orbit environment. The four passive experiment canisters would be retrieved by a later STS crew after almost 2 years of data collection. During their work on

16384-478: Was undocked on February 22 and re-entered over the Pacific Ocean . The Soyuz docked on February 23 at the +X docking port on the rear of the Kvant module. An hour and a half after docking, the hatches opened and the Soyuz TM-23 crew were greeted by Yuri Gidzenko , Sergei Avdeyev and Thomas Reiter , members of Mir Principle Expedition 20 and Euromir 95 . This began a week of joint operations where Mir 20 handed

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