Iranian-American space tourist (amateur astronaut)

The forth space tourist and the first female space tourist (amateur astronaut) is the US entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari. This Iranian born lady is a co-founder of Telecom Technologies Inc., a Texas-based company. I was amazed when I saw her wearing a suit with both American and Iranian Flags. (pictures are taken from BBC-Persian and Iranian.com)

update: more photos

Anousheh and her husband were the sponsors of the 10,000,000$ Ansari-X-Prize for the first non-governmental organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks.

It is amazing that despite all the propaganda around Iran in the media, and the systematic work of demonizing its current regime, most of the Iranians are proud of their nationality, their culture, their brilliant history, and their beautiful land.

I wish her a safe voyage.

Jay Leno and Iranian space program
This reminded me of an episode of Jay Leno's nightly! show (Video Link), in which he interviews an imaginary Iranian Astronaut. Although the represented character is an Arab character (rather than a Persian one), the show itself is very amusing. For the sake of clarification I have to point out that Iran's national bird is Nightingale and not a buzzard.

update: NewYorkTimes has a nice article about Anousheh.