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allowed her the time to revisit those ambitions. “I always had this desire and this feeling that I need to somehow find my way back to space,” she told me. “And when we sold our company, it was my first opportunity, where I went back to school, started studying astronomy again, and I started looking for how would I make this [dream] happen. And as I was searching for a solution, the universe brought me to Peter [Diamandis, founder of the XPRIZE Foundation], and the Ansari XPRIZE was launched out of it.” As a non-profit organization, the XPRIZE Foundation is today known for launching global competitions that aim to spur the development of technological innovations for the good of humanity. However, back when Ansari first met Diamandis, XPRIZE was in its very early days, but the two found common ground in their pursuit of moonshots- and space exploration was something they were both very keen on. At that time in the US, space travel was considered to be exclusively a government affair, and, as the XPRIZE website notes, “space exploration for the private sector was neither possible nor affordable.” Ansari wanted to turn this around, of course, and it was her association with Diamandis that led to her and her family sponsoring the first competition under the XPRIZE banner, the $10million Ansari XPRIZE, which was aimed at enabling “the creation of a reliable, reusable, privately financed, manned spaceship.” In 2004, the winner of this prize ended up being a company called Mojave Aerospace Ventures, with its technology later
getting licensed by legendary entrepreneur Richard Branson to establish Virgin Galactic- this competition is thus said to have essentially kickstarted the creation of the $2 billion private space industry. “What was very significant was the fact that a $10 million prize attracted a hundred million in an investment from teams across the globe,” Ansari recalls. “And then an industry that was going to be worth about hundreds of billions of dollars was created out of it.” Now, it was around this time that the term “space tourism” also started to get thrown about- American millionaire Dennis Tito had already made headlines in 2001 by paying private space flight company Space Adventures to fly him to (and spend time in) space. In February 2006, Ansari secured an opportunity to serve as the back-up for Japanese businessman Daisuke Enomoto on a Space Adventures flight to the International Space Station. In August that same year, Enomoto was medically disqualified for the trip, and Ansari got to occupy the space that had now become available on this particular flight. With that, on September 18, 2006, Ansari found herself being a part of the Expedition 14 crew of the Soyuz TMA-9, which blasted into space for an eight-day expedition aboard the International Space Station. For someone who was realizing a lifelong dream, Ansari likens her experience of being in space as a sort of homecoming- space, she says, felt like where she was always meant to be. “The experience is transformational in many different ways,” Ansari says. “When
you see earth from space, you sort of can put things in a new perspective. So, you shift your priorities. And you become all of a sudden, if you weren't already, you've become more of a global person, where you see our planet as just one home, one planet. There is no separation between anyone living on the planet, and problems and opportunities become global. So, when I returned, "I HAVE BEEN A SPOKESPERSON, A BOARD MEMBER, AN ADVOCATE, A SPONSOR, AND ONE OF XPRIZE’S BIGGEST FANS, AND I AM GRATEFUL FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO WORK WITH SUCH A PASSIONATE GROUP OF INDIVIDUALS DEDICATED TO CHANGING THE WORLD FOR THE BETTER.”
anything that I worked on, I could not just narrow it down to one location; it had to be global, at a global scale. And also, your priorities and your relationships with the environment, with your family, with what's important in life, changes, because you also realize the fragility of our lives, and our planet, and our environment… It's like time and space come to have a different meaning for you. You start thinking about, well, what's important in life. You know, who's important for me to connect to, and you start thinking about your purpose more than ever, and how you want to spend the rest of your life.” >>>
Anousheh Ansari, CEO, XPRIZE Foundation
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