Anousheh Ansari

Anousheh Ansari is an Iranian-American engineer, entrepreneur, and spaceflight participant who became the first astronaut of Iranian descent and the first female private space explorer. She co-founded Prodea Systems, an Internet-of-Things technology company, and later became CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation. Together with her family, she sponsored the Ansari XPRIZE, a competition that helped accelerate commercial spaceflight.