From a balcony in Mashhad, a city between two mountain ranges in northeastern Iran, a young girl looked up at the stars — far away yet close enough to kindle a dream.

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Space Adventures

Anousheh Ansari is set to lift off on Monday for an eight-day visit to the International Space Station.

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“I’d lie there looking and wondering,” she said many years later. “I was so young but so fascinated with space; it’s always been in my heart.”

Now the wonder of the girl is about to become reality for the woman, as Anousheh Ansari prepares to become the first woman to go into space as an amateur astronaut.

On Monday, Mrs. Ansari and two professional astronauts are scheduled to blast off in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, part of a crew-exchange flight to the International Space Station.