Interview: Back to Earth with a vision

On 18 September a Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, headed for the International Space Station. On board was Anousheh Ansari, the first woman in history to buy a ticket to space. Ansari signed up with space tourism company Space Adventures and was slotted as a stand-in for Daisuke Enomoto, a space explorer from Japan. Just weeks before lift-off, Enomoto was disqualified on medical grounds and Ansari received news that she would be going to space, fulfilling a lifelong dream first held as a child in Iran. Now she has become the first space visitor…