Anousheh Ansari (Persian: انوشه انصاری; née Raissyan;[2] born September 12, 1966) is an Iranian-American engineer, space tourist, and entrepreneur.

[10] She witnessed the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and recalls memories of "hearing gun shots, screaming, people being killed, and explosions".

[11] Ansari immigrated to the United States in 1984 as a teenager,[12] and attended a high school in Northern Virginia, Lake Braddock.

[13] Apart from her native Persian, she is fluent in English and French and acquired a working knowledge of Russian for her spaceflight experience.

[14] She received her Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering and computer science at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and her master's degree at George Washington University in Washington D.C.[3][15][16] After graduation, Raissyan began work at MCI, where she met her future husband, Hamid Ansari.

[17] In 1993, she persuaded her husband and her brother-in-law, Amir Ansari, to co-found Telecom Technologies Inc., using their savings and corporate retirement accounts, as deregulation happened in the US telecommunications industry.

[citation needed] The company was a supplier of softswitch technology that enabled telecom "service providers to enhance system performance, lower operating costs and furnish new revenue opportunities."

Prodea is a privately held company formed by the Ansari family with development centers in Richardson, Texas, and Silicon Valley.

[22] Along with her brother-in-law, Amir Ansari, she made a multimillion-dollar contribution to the X PRIZE foundation on May 5, 2004, the 43rd anniversary of Alan Shepard's sub-orbital spaceflight.

[29] Ansari lifted off on the Soyuz TMA-9 mission with commander Mikhail Tyurin (RSA) and flight engineer Michael Lopez-Alegria (NASA) at 04:59 (UTC) on Monday, September 18, 2006, from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

[30][31] Ansari landed safely aboard Soyuz TMA-8 on September 29, 2006, at 01:13 UTC on the steppes of Kazakhstan (90 kilometers north of Arkalyk) with U.S. astronaut Jeffrey Williams and Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov.

[39] A few U.S.-based media wrongly speculated that she intended to wear the version of the Iranian flag that predated the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.

[40] She and her husband said no political message was intended, despite the increasing tensions between the United States and Iran, which had dominated world headlines in the weeks leading up to her launch.

[43] The flight was given significant coverage by Iranian state television, with an hour-long live interview with Ansari being broadcast on the show Asemane Shab ("Night Sky").

The astronomy magazine NOJUM also published an exclusive interview of Pouria Nazemi with Ansari before her trip, in which she discussed her vision for commercial spaceflight.

"[50] Ansari participated as a speaker at the 2010 Honeywell Leadership Academy with Homer Hickam at United States Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama.

Farhadi did not attend the ceremony due to his opposition to President Trump's immigration ban applying to seven Muslim countries, including Iran.

[54] Ansari has served on the boards of directors for Make-a-Wish Foundation of North Texas and Collin County Children's Advocacy Center.