MARATHON WOMAN

By Jeffrey Kluger

Shannon Lucid looked forward to a lot of things while preparing for her fifth mission in space, but she never expected tomatoes. So in the third month of her stay aboard the Russian space station Mir other provisions, Lucid was delighted to find a generous supply of the plump red fruit. "For the next week, we had tomatoes three times a day," she wrote in the weekly summary of events she beamed back to Earth. "It was a sad meal when we finished the last one."

Tomatoes were a rare grace note in a grueling mission that was to end this week when the shuttle Atlantis returns Lucid to Earth after six long months in space. The 53-year-old shuttle veteran will have amassed 223 days in orbit since 1985, making her America's most experienced astronaut. Besting Russian cosmonaut Elena Kondakova, Lucid will also have set the women's record for consecutive days in orbit (188), after hurricanes and technical glitches delayed shuttle flights that should have picked her up almost seven weeks earlier.

Lucid, who took the delays sportingly, realized she would be earning her pay in space this trip as soon as she crawled into Mir last March, joining the two men she came to know affectionately as her "two Yuris"--cosmonauts Yuri Onufrienko and Yuri Usachev. The Russian station is a cluster of six cramped, camper-size pods, with most of the living space devoted to labs. Personnel sleep in curtained, closet-like enclosures at the end of one pod and exercise with their bodies bungeed into place on treadmills; when it comes time for a shower, they must get by with space shampoo and a tepid sponge bath. ("NASA has promised to hose her down before they give her back," quips husband Michael Lucid.)

Spartan as Mir is, its science facilities are first rate, and Lucid, a biochemist, spent much of her time aloft studying how the space environment affects living tissue and how protein crystals grow in zero gravity. Like others who have tried to live and work in space, however, she found that the living part doesn't always go as well as the working part.

Norman Thagard, the only other American to live aboard Mir, spent 115 days on the station last year, losing 17 lbs. and complaining afterward of the "cultural isolation" he felt while aloft. Lucid found that she was sometimes treated like a second-class passenger. Her crewmates occasionally left Mir to conduct maintenance outside. When they did, they placed red tape over the communications panel, a blunt sign to their guest that she was not to fool with a system they assumed she did not understand. The cultural gulf threatened to get even wider when a ranking officer in the Russian space program suggested that the space station should be tidier with Lucid aboard because "we know women love to clean." Lucid tried to defuse the incident in a Mir-to-ground press conference. "We all work together to keep the place tidy," she said.

If the crew sometimes tripped over its interpersonal laces, the mission was still an improvement over Thagard's--if only because of the food. In the past, the two main station staples have been warm borscht and jellied perch--less than lip-smacking to Western palates. Facing months of such fare, Lucid took culinary matters into her own hands, coming aboard with such Yankee treats as shrimp, pudding and peanut butter. Resupply ships kept the Mir pantry filled with such junk foods as potato chips and candy as well as Lucid's much loved tomatoes. Luxury items like mail and novels were also ferried up. "The only thing it would be nice to have more of," Lucid confessed, "would be M&Ms."

More important than regular shipments of food, however, was regular contact with family. Throughout the mission, Lucid was in touch via E-mail with her three children and her husband. Teleconferences were arranged so family members could not only hear familiar voices but also see familiar faces.

At bottom, Lucid's flight was less about setting records than doing science. While the orbital research she conducted had value, the real test subject was Lucid. For the next six months, medics will study everything from her bone loss and muscle tone to her heart. Assuming she fully recovers, NASA will doubtless send more astronauts aloft for still longer missions. Will Lucid fly again? Her family seems to think so. "When she gets back to Earth," says her father, the Rev. J. Oscar Wells, "she'll be like a tire that's ready to be retreaded."

--Reported by Wendy Cole/Chicago, Jerry Hannifin/Cape Canaveral and Dick Thompson/Washington

With reporting by WENDY COLE/CHICAGO, JERRY HANNIFIN/CAPE CANAVERAL AND DICK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON