TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Dozens of space travel
enthusiasts, most of them women, burst into applause at dawn at an observatory
near the capital as the spacecraft carrying the first Iranian woman to travel
into space appeared in the sky.
Baikonur, Kazakhstan, has become an
inspiration to women in male-dominated Iran.
The Soyuz spacecraft
carrying Ansari and Expedition 14 commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and flight
engineer Mikhail Tyurin docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on
Wed. Sept. 20, two days after launch.
Space enthusiasts gathered
Saturday at the Zaferanieh Observatory in Tehran were rapt as they followed the
progress of the space station, visible to the naked eye for about two minutes,
as it streaked across the sky.
"Anousheh is my
hope,'' said teenager Delagah Dadbeh, watching the spacecraft as tears of joy
rolled down her cheek.
"She will shine in
Iranian history as a woman who broke barriers and succeeded in conquering space
with her endeavor,'' Dadbeh said.
"Ansari has shown
Iranian women the road to progress. We only need to believe in ourselves,''
Dadbeh said, as another woman, Homa Parvaei nodded in agreement.
Ansari, the world's first paying female
space tourist left Iran with her family a few years after the 1979 Islamic
revolution that toppled the pro-U.S. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and brought
hardline clerics to power. One of the reasons the family left Iran was that the opportunities for a young girl to study science were becoming limited.
Ansari has said she is eager to see Iran from space and hopes to inspire girls in her homeland to study science. Ansari says
she has received e-mail messages from many of them.
Iran's state-run media has briefly
mentioned Ansari's voyage.
But some hardline media
criticized state television for even this, dismissing Ansari as a "wealthy
woman.''
The Iranian Space Agency
was the only government-run body to congratulate Ansari on her achievement.
Ansari, 40, is a telecommunications entrepreneur.
She is the fourth private astronaut to pay a reported US$20 million (euro16
million) for a space station visit. She joined a Russian cosmonaut and a U.S. astronaut for the trip. She was due to return to Earth Sept. 29.
Hardline clerics in Iran have banned women from running in presidential elections and believe that a woman's
sole role is in the home.
"The best identity for
women is shaped within the family,'' said Zohreh Tabibzadeh, who heads a
state-run women's center. Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appointed her
to the post.
Under the strict
interpretation of Islamic law applied in Iran, men may marry up to four wives
at the same time, a right not granted to women. To work or travel abroad, a
woman needs the permission of her husband or father. But Iranian women enjoy
more political rights than women in some neighboring countries.
Under reformist former
President Mohammad Khatami there was a loosening of restrictions on social
freedoms that benefited women. Ahmadinejad has tried to reimpose those
restrictions, but without much success.
Many women appear heavily
made up in public wearing colorful loose headscarves, a dramatic shift from the
1980s when women were required to appear with black head-to-toe chador.
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