One of the main backers of the Ansari X Prize could be the first female, paying space tourist and travel to the International Space Station in 2007, Russia鈥檚 space agency Roskosmos said on Friday.
Anousheh Ansari, the 38-year-old head of Telecom Technologies in the US, helped sponsor the $10 million prize awarded in 2004 to the first private company to send a reusable piloted spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. Now the Iranian-born US citizen will begin training for her own trip to space.
鈥淲e have signed a preliminary contract with Ansari under which she is training as a back-up for Japanese space tourist Daisuke Enomoto,鈥� Alexei Krasnov, Russia鈥檚 head of crewed space flights, told the ITAR-TASS news agency.
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September launch
Enomoto is set to be the fourth space tourist to visit the International Space Station and is scheduled to launch on a Soyuz spacecraft in September 2006. Ansari may fly to the ISS on a Soyuz in April 2007, said Krasnov.
On Friday, both Enomoto and Ansari toured the Soyuz spacecraft that will take the 34-year-old Japanese Internet entrepreneur to space, ITAR-TASS reported. The ISS trips are expected to cost $20 million (聙15.7 million) each.
Meanwhile, Roskosmos said on Friday that an agreement has been signed to launch the first South Korean astronaut on another Soyuz taxi flight to the ISS in early 2008.
