Anousheh Ansari, CEO of XPRIZE Foundation is a trailblazer in space exploration. In 2006 she self-funded a trip to the International Space Station (ISS) where she spent 9 days performing a series of experiments on behalf of the European Space Agency.

Today she spearheads some of the most innovative space competitions in the world. 

Her work emphasizes that advancements in space directly benefit life on Earth, from improving global communications to aiding climate change research.

In this episode, Anousheh highlights the vital role of competitions in driving innovation and the impact of these breakthroughs on everyday life. 

She delves into how XPRIZE’s challenges have transcended traditional boundaries, encouraging creative solutions to some of humanity’s most pressing issues. You’ll hear about her vision of a future where space is not just a realm for astronauts but a canvas for entrepreneurs, educators, and dreamers from all walks of life. Anousheh’s story is a testament to the idea that the business of space is ripe with opportunities for all, shaping a more equitable and prosperous future.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Anousheh's journey from Iranian roots to space.
• How telecom success led to sponsoring space exploration.
• XPRIZE's role in catalyzing space innovations for Earth and beyond.
• The significance of space technology in daily Earth life.
• How space technologies enhance our understanding of Earth and aid in solving global challenges.
• Opportunities for multidisciplinary involvement in the evolving space economy.

Quote:

" The future of space is about building businesses, whether it's in orbit or whether it's on the surface of the moon. These businesses require resources other than just the astronauts”

- Anousheh Ansari

Episode Links: 

Follow Inter Astra on LinkedIn

Connect with Anousheh Ansari on LinkedIn

XPRIZE

SxSW

European Space Agency

International Space Station (ISS)

📖 Read Anousheh's book My Dream of Stars: From Daughter of Iran to Space Pioneer by Anousheh Ansari with Homer Hickam

🎧 Listen to Anousheh Ansari and Lauren Worley’s panel at South by Southwest 2024 

‘The Business of Space: From Industry to Economy HERE

Credits:

Production by CxS Partners LTD

Executive Producer: Toby Goodman 

Audio & Sound Design: Lee Turner

Recorded in Austin at SxSW on Nomono Sound Capsule

Artwork: Ryan Field

Join the #1 community creating equitable access to the business of space.

https://interastra.space

You're one of those frontline people who are stepping into a new world, and you're going to build whole new communities and new, businesses. And being able to, be the first ones to shape that future in space, I think, is an exciting opportunity for a lot of people to get involved. Hi.

I'm Anousheh Ansari, and you are listening to Your Business in Space. I'm currently CEO of XPRIZE Foundation. XPRIZE Foundation is a nonprofit organization, and it's been around for 30 years and got its start by launching a competition to open up access to space. And, since the success of that competition, now we are using the means of competition to advance technologies and breakthroughs to solve humanity's grandest challenges. What we do on a day to day basis is, in any of our 7 domains, which is, climate and energy, biodiversity and conservation, or health, or learning in society, or food, wastewater, or deep tech, quantum AI, and, of course, space.

We look at what are some of the barriers that's keeping us from achieving an equitable world of abundance, a world that we all wanna live in in the future, and what innovations and breakthroughs we need to enable that future. And if we don't see that the world is moving in that direction, then we launch a competition with very specific measurable outcomes, and then challenge the world to go build that solution and make it happen. And we have now launched about, more than half a $1,000,000,000 in prizes. We have 7 active prizes currently, each attacking and addressing a different problem that we face to achieve that future. I grew up in Iran until I was about 16 years old, and then I moved to US, finished high school here in US, and then went to college, studied electro engineering and computer science, which helped shape my careers moving forward. As an immigrant who came here without any money, I worked throughout my, college days, odd jobs, from cashier to waitress to you name it. I worked at the school as well. And then when I right before I graduated, I got my first job, and I was with a small company that doesn't exist anymore.

And they did, they provide the service that's not needed anymore. Mhmm. And they were called MCI Telecommunication, and they were long distance service provider. Because back then, you actually had to pay a lot of money to make a long distance call. So if you called from, you know, New York to Austin, you actually had to pay for that call. It wasn't free. And if you had to call internationally, you had to even pay more. It was like, $4 a minute that you had to pay.

So that's the business of that company, and I started working, as one of their engineers and designing new services, and that's how I got my start. I wanted to be an astronaut and go to space ever since I can remember. I was a child very young. I don't know. Maybe I was 5 or 6 years old. And I think my fascination actually started with just, stargazing at night. When I was young in Iran, it's hot summers. We don't have very powerful air conditioning in in our homes, so I would sleep outside on the balcony of my grandparents' apartment.

That would give me an opportunity to just gaze at the night skies. And looking at the stars made me curious to better understand what are those shiny, bright things up there, and I wanted to go up there and touch them and understand them and see what's there. And as I learned more about it, the more I wanted to know. And and I was curious to see if there are all these other worlds out there that I can see or be in touch with or if there are other people out there. And, I was just fascinated with going to space, fascinated with aliens. I remember as I grew older, I kept praying that aliens will come and abduct me and take me to space. I would go at night and look and try to identify them from my balcony. And and, unfortunately, they never showed up.

And so, if they're out there, I I don't know if they're listening, but I'm still ready to go and explore with an alien life form out there. Even though my whole study and career took a different turn in space, I never lost my passion. And, in my head, at least, I told myself I'm just putting it on hold until the right opportunity comes, and I will continue the search, for that opportunity. And, you know, I tried to keep up with literature about what was going on in space. I love astrophysics. I would read up on all the latest discoveries and was especially fascinated with the origin of universe and black holes and dark energy and dark matter. So I would just keep up with all these, information and imagine that one day I'll find a way. I didn't know how.

I even planned that if I would die, I would ask my parents or my spouse to send my ashes to space so at least my ashes would make it to space. So I had this fascination all along as I built my career in, as an engineer in telecom and later on as an entrepreneur, built successful companies in tech. I, had an opportunity to come back to my passion after I sold my company. And that's when I went back to school, went back to UT Austin, and started studying, astronomy because I wanted to, you know, really get more in-depth to in the topic and started looking at how can I actually get engaged in the whole space community so I can find a path? Around the same time, on the other side of US, Peter Diamandis had read the book and was inspired, by the story of Charles Lindbergh flying from New York to Paris to win a prize to look at that model and see if he can apply it to space and open up space because Charles Lindbergh's flight was sort of a pivotal moment for the aviation industry. So he wanted to create a pivotal moment for the space industry. And he had designed a competition to open up access to space, but he couldn't find anyone to sponsor it. When I had sold my company in all my interviews when they asked me what do you wanna do next or why what you're passionate about. I talked about my passion for space and wanting to go to space.

So he read this story, in one of the interviews that I had done and decided to come and find me, and he did. And when he told me about the concept of a competition to open up this, you know, open up access to space, it immediately resonated with me as an entrepreneur. I looked at it and I said, okay. So you are talking about asking the world to go build a spaceship in their garage and then fly it to edge of space, 100 kilometers, and not the only ones, do it twice within 2 weeks. If they can demonstrate 2 successful flights, then we're gonna pay them the prize money, which was the $10,000,000. Said, yes. That's basically it. I'm like, wow.

What an amazing way to create risky breakthroughs. This is great. As an entrepreneur, I could relate to it. So my family and I became sponsors of the prize. The prize was, very successful, not only in bringing a lot of attention and people who wanted to, develop spaceships. We had 26 teams from 7 countries who competed. And this is at the time that no one talked about space. No one was, except for government agencies, was allowed to go to space.

This is, like, in late 19 nineties. So we managed to really turn things around. And during the time that it took for the competition to be won, which was in you know, it was won in 2004, A $100,000,000 was invested in these companies to win a $10,000,000 prize. So we had this multiplier effect on bringing capital to an area that was stagnant or was doing anything that sort of was a very high risk, very low reward area. And that, plus the fact that we spent a lot of time with FAA and, managed to change their mind about involving private sector into space business and creating a framework for them to, you know, allow for private companies to launch. That whole thing changed the lens, and it was my first step into space, which was very successful. A year after the competition was won, we were celebrating, and that's when I got an offer to go and train in, Tsar City in in in Moscow near Moscow to go to space. And it was an opportunity of, of lifetime, which I couldn't say no to.

And I did end up going. And and, in 2006, I flew to International Space Station for 11 amazing, unforgettable days. There are few misconceptions about business of space or space in general. 1, people would talk about space, and they're like, why is it relevant? Why should I care? It has nothing to do with my life here on Earth, and that, you know, it's sort of this fun exploration thing, and it's not important. This is one big misconception because a lot of our technologies that we use today depends on businesses in space. A lot of materials we use was developed during research in space and continues to be the case. So space plays a huge role in our everyday life here on Earth, And, especially, recently with advancement in other types of technology, like sensing, lowering the cost of access to space has enabled for, you know, small satellites and satellite constellations that are launched. So they're enhancing communication.

They're enhancing our knowledge about our own planet, and we're collecting so much data from space. And all of that is changing the way we understand our planet, can manage resources on planet, can manage agriculture, make decisions, smarter, better decisions, understand the weather patterns, understand our climate change. And these are all very important information that will play a huge role in in future of humanity on this planet. So that's another reason why it's important. The other part of this is that when people talk about space, they only think about astronauts and going to space. But the future of space is about building businesses, whether it's in orbit or whether it's on the surface of the moon. These businesses require resources other than just the astronauts. You have lots of technology.

You have lawyers. You have accountants. You have people who need their haircut on on the surface of the moon. There are designers who will design the future of, you know, what we wear in space. Health and medicine has a whole, you know, other area of development, whether it's manufacturing pharmaceuticals in space or, you know, making sure we have healthy people and animals and plants in space. All of these things are opportunities for people from different sectors to get involved in the business of space, and I find that to be very exciting. You're one of those frontline people who are stepping into a new world, and you're going to build whole new communities and new, businesses, and being able to, be the first ones to shape that future in space, I think it's an exciting opportunity for a lot of people to get involved. I think any young person today making decisions on what they're going to study, they can add a aspect of space to whatever it is they're studying, whether it's finance and business, or law, or any type of engineering, any type of material science, any type of technology, AI, sensing, communication.

I mean, I cannot think of any field where you can't add a space angle to what they're doing. Because everything that we've built here on Earth, we would need to build it, develop it, and change it for space. And I think that's what's exciting and gives an opportunity for anyone who has you know, they don't wanna go to space necessarily, but they're interested in space, and they wanna do something. Like, what can I do? Well, whatever you like to do, see how you can do the thing you like to do in space or for space or for advancing space. Right now, we just came off of launching several very important competitions. 1 was our health span. The other one was our, water scarcity, which is desalination of seawater to address water issues on the planet, and then quantum algorithm to drive quantum computing, you know, innovation towards solving some of our grand challenges. But the one that I'm now focused on, which is also related to the business of space, is to launch a new competition in space debris removal and working to find the right sponsors to launch that.

But that's a huge issue as we have been sending a lot of satellites over the years to space. From time to time, we see a headline where satellites blew up and created debris, which put ISS in danger, or some satellite collided with another satellite, created disruption in our GPS systems or some other communication system. So all these issues are because of space debris.

So we don't have anyone cleaning up our orbits, and, we'd like to to inspire and incentivize those future companies who will become the trash management companies of space. So I'm looking forward to, being able to launch that.

I'm Anousheh Ansari, and you've been listening to your business in space.

If you wanna learn more about our work at XPrize, please go to our website, xprize.org, or follow us on all social media channels, and you will learn about our active prizes and what new stuff we have in store.

To discover more, head to interastra.space.