A US national of Iranian origin could be the first female space tourist and may travel aboard a Russian vessel to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2007, Russia's space agency Roskosmos said Friday.
"We have signed a preliminary contract with (Anoushe) Ansari under which she is training as a back-up for Japanese space tourist Daisuke Enomoto," Alexei Krasnov, in charge of manned space flights, was quoted by ITAR-TASS news agency as saying.
"It's not excluded that she will herself leave for the ISS in spring 2007," Krasnov said.
Ansari, the 38-year-old head of Telecom Technologies in the United States, left Iran when she was 17.
Ansari and Enomoto on Friday toured the Soyuz spacecraft that will take the 34-year-old Japanese Internet entrepreneur to space in September, ITAR-TASS reported.
Enomoto will pay some 20 million dollars (15.7 million euros) to be the fourth space tourist to blast off for the International Space Station.
Source: Agence France-Presse
