AP Since long before leaving her native Iran as a teenager in 1984, Anousheh Ansari stared at the stars and dreamed of traveling closer to them.
Now at age 40, after an improbable journey that has included earning an engineering degree and starting a telecommunications company that made her rich, this Dallas businesswoman became the first female space tourist on a Soyuz spacecraft that lifted off Monday.
“I’ve always been fascinated with space and always wondered about the mysteries of space and wanted to be able to experience it firsthand,” she said from the launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
She says she is eager to see Iran from space and hopes to inspire girls in her homeland to study science.
Her space ride will cost about $20 million. Ansari can afford it because she and her husband sold their company in 2000 for about $550 million in stock from the acquiring company. |