Residents of the Lone Star state may soon have something else to brag about besides their world-famous BBQ and professional sports teams. A Texas woman just announced to various media outlets that she will become the world’s first female space tourist.
Anousheh Ansari told reporters she plans to take flight on September 14th with a Russian crew on a mission to the International Space Station. Ansari will reportedly join the crew of the Soyuz TMA-9, which will launch from Kazakhstan.
“This is a dream that I’ve longed for since childhood,” Ansari said. “I’m fascinated by the mystery and beauty of the cosmos. I deeply believe that the long-term survival of the human race will largely depend on our achievements in space exploration.”
Ansari told reporters that her opportunity to orbit the earth was meant to be. And she may be right. According to Russia’s space agency, the only reason the Texas woman will get to blast off is because the Japanese businessman who was initally chosen for the mission failed a medical test.
Russia’s space agency also revealed part of Ansari’s space flight schedule, saying that she will join Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin and U.S. astronaut Miguel Lopez-Alegria on September 14th for liftoff and is expected to return to Earth 10 days later with Pavel Vinogradov and Jeff Williams, who have been on the space station since April 1st.
Ansari’s home-technology company, Prodea Systems, Inc. is sponsoring her trip. (She is the chairwoman, and her husband is chief executive.) A company spokesperson said Prodea Systems, Inc. “helped fund a competition, renamed the Ansari X Prize, for the first privately financed manned spacecraft to make a suborbital flight.”
While she now calls Texas home, Ansari is quick to mention that she actually immigrated to the United States from Iran as a teenager and earned degrees in computer and electrical engineering… and now she is about to make history.