In 1979, Lucid became a full-fledged NASA astronaut, among the first American women to achieve this milestone.
After her selection in 1978 in the first U.S. astronaut class to include women, Shannon Lucid accomplished a major career milestone by becoming a full-fledged astronaut with NASA in August 1979. This represented a transformative advancement for gender equality in science and space exploration, as she, along with her female counterparts, broke new ground in a male-dominated field.