WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

At the Skid Strip on Cape Canaveral Air Station, U.S. astronaut Shannon W. Lucid gets a personal escort from KSC Director Jay Honeycutt (left) and STS-79 Pilot Terrence W. Wilcutt as she prepares to return to Johnson Space Center in Houston. A special ceremony awaits Lucid and the other five members of the STS-79 flight crew to commemorate Lucid's record-setting stay aboard the Russian Space Station Mir. Lucid embarked to Mir on March 22 and returned to Earth yesterday, Sept. 26, aboard the orbiter Atlantis with the crew of Space Shuttle Mission STS-79. Her 188 days on-orbit represent a U.S. human spaceflight record as well as the longest stay in space by a woman.