Iranian-American Woman in Space

I think this is something where "You go girl!" is appropo...

Ride into space caps stargazer's dream

By David Koenig
Associated Press
Published September 17, 2006

DALLAS -- 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 learning a new language, earning an engineering degree and starting a telecommunications company, the Dallas businesswoman will become the first female space tourist on a Soyuz spacecraft that lifts 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 by phone from the launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Ansari's space ride will cost about $20 million. She can afford it because she and her husband, Hamid, sold their company, Telecom Technologies, in 2000 for about $550 million in stock.

In 2002 Ansari helped pay a $10million award for the first successful privately financed manned trip into space. SpaceShipOne, backed by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, claimed the Ansari X Prize by making two flights to the edge of space more than 60 miles above California's Mojave Desert.