50 Iranian-Americans you Should Know: Anousheh Ansari

On February 26, engineer and space industry enthusiast Anousheh Ansari and NASA scientist Firouz Naderi accepted Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s award for best foreign-language film at the 89th Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, California. Farhadi boycotted the awards in response to President Trump's executive order banning people from seven majority Muslim countries from entering the US. In a statement read out by Ansari, who was the first Iranian in space, Farhadi said the boycott was “out of respect for the people of my country and those of other six nations who have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the US” and condemned attempts to create division and fear in the world. 

Iranians have been making significant contributions to business, science, culture and entertainment in the United States since the early 20th century. Today, there are almost one million people of Iranian origin living in the United States. In this series, IranWire profiles the Iranian-Americans you should know, highlighting their achievements and careers, and asking what it means to be part of one of America’s most educated and successful communities.

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Anousheh Ansari is a telecommunications engineer, entrepreneur and the first female private space explorer. She was the first Iranian to go into space, accompanying a NASA astronaut and Russian Space Agency cosmonaut on a mission to the International Space Station in 2006. The Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying Ansari left the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on September 18, 2006. 

On February 26, Ansari and NASA scientist Firouz Naderi accepted Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s award for best foreign-language picture at the 89th Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood, California. Farhadi boycotted the awards in response to President Trump's executive order banning people from seven majority Muslim countries from entering the US. In a statement read out by Ansari, Farhadi said the boycott was “out of respect for the people of my country and those of other six nations who have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the US” and condemned attempts to create division and fear in the world. 

In an interview in 2012, Ansari said she believed more world leaders should be sent into space. If this happened, she said, “their policies will be much different than the policies they have today.” She said the time she spent in space means she now only thinks of problems in terms of global solutions. And a few days before she went into space as part of the Soyuz TMA-9 mission, she told the website Space.com: “Looking at it from up there you can't see any borders or any differentiation between different races or anything like that and all you see is one planet; one place that all of us have to take care of if we want to be able to live on it for a long time.” 

Ansari was born in Mashhad in northeastern Iran in 1966, and as a child moved to Tehran. She and her family left Iran when she was 16, a few years after the Islamic Revolution, settling in Texas. She completed a Bachelor's degree in electronics and computer engineering from George Mason University, and a Master's degree in electrical engineering from George Washington University.

After working with the US company MCI, she, her husband and her brother-in-law set up a telecommunications company in 1993, which they later sold for hundreds of millions of dollars — an outcome that helped fund Ansari’s passion for the space industry.

Ansari founded Prodea, which offers digital solutions, including linking people to home automation devices and other services available through online platforms. The Ansari family sponsored the 2004 Ansari X Prize, contributing $10 million to award innovative work aimed at developing space exploration.

When Ansar was 35, Fortune magazine listed her as one of only two women in its America’s 40 most successful business figures under the age of 40. “I have a lot of roots in Iran and feel very close to the Iranian people and the culture of the country,” she told the magazine. She said the same in the 2012 Space interview, adding: “I have always been very grateful for all the opportunities in the United States.”

During her 2006 spaceflight, Ansari also carried out medical and biological experiments for the European Space Agency.  Ansari paid around $20m to take part in the journey, along with another space tourist — Ansari prefers the term “spaceflight participant” — from Brazil. She was in space for a total of 10 days, two of which she spent on the International Space Station. She wrote a blog during the journey, which she published in Persian, German and Russian.

Asked about whether she thought she could inspire other women, she said, “I hope to inspire everyone—especially young people, women, and young girls all over the world, and in Middle Eastern countries that do not provide women with the same opportunities as men—to not give up their dreams and to pursue them.” In 2011, she delivered the Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Awards keynote speech, speaking about what it was like to be what she termed a “space ambassador.”

Prior to the 2006 mission, Ansari had planned to wear a spacesuit featuring both the US flag and an Iranian flag without the government-specific emblem on it. Russian and NASA officials insisted she did not wear the Iranian flag officially, but she did keep the flag on her official flight patch and wore the colors of the Iranian flag. 

Ansari, working with co-author Homer Hickam, published her memoir, My Dream of Stars, in 2010.