MOSCOW -- As high-tech entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari rose to wealth and prominence after immigrating to the United States from Iran as a teen, she never lost her childhood dream of being an astronaut. She often spoke of watching "Star Trek" as a girl in pre-revolutionary Iran, of staring at the nighttime sky and dreaming big dreams.

Now she is preparing to see her lifelong dream come true.

Ansari signed up early this year to be a space tourist at the price of about $20 million, aiming to visit the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule. She began training in March, but was second in line for the next tourist slot, after Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke Enomoto.

Then last week Russian space authorities announced that Enomoto had failed a medical examination and Ansari, 39, would become the world's first female space tourist, due to blast off next month with a two-man crew.

"I had to pinch myself to make sure that I'm not dreaming, and it's really happening," Ansari said Wednesday at a news conference at Star City, a cosmonaut training center about 25 miles northeast of Moscow.

"Ever since I was a child I always used to gaze up at the stars and wonder what's out there in the universe, and wonder if there are others like me pondering the same question, somewhere else out there," she said. "I always was interested and fascinated by the mystery of the universe."

Ansari said she expected the high point of her journey to be the moment when she first sees Earth as "a blue, glowing globe against the dark background of the cosmos."

The chairwoman and co-founder of Prodea Systems Inc. is scheduled to begin her 10-day space journey Sept. 14 or 18, flying with Spanish-born U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin. She will return to Earth with the two-man crew now at the station. The exact launch date depends on whether the U.S. shuttle Atlantis makes a visit to the station before then. Weather permitting, the shuttle is scheduled to launch sometime between Sept. 6 and 8, Russian space officials said.

Three men have preceded Ansari into space as tourists, all on Soyuz flights.

Now a U.S. citizen, Ansari immigrated in 1984 at age 16 and went on to study electrical engineering and computer science at George Mason University. She and her husband, Hamid Ansari, founded Telecom Technologies Inc. in 1993, which is where she made her fortune.

She won Working Woman magazine's entrepreneurial excellence award in 2000 and was featured on its cover. The next year Fortune magazine listed her among the 40 richest Americans under age 40 who earned their own wealth. It placed her assets then at $180 million.

Ansari and others in her family were the key financial backers for a prize designed to spur commercial spaceflight: the $10 million Ansari X Prize won when SpaceShipOne, a small rocket built by aircraft designer Burt Rutan, blasted into space twice in five days in 2004. She supported the project partly because she wanted to buy a spaceflight ticket once commercial trips became available.

"I'm hoping that not only my flight but the life I've lived so far become an inspiration for our youth anywhere in the world, especially women and girls around the world, to pursue their dream, whatever that may be," she said Wednesday.

Asked how he felt about his wife's pending visit to space, Hamid Ansari said in an interview at Star City that it is "both exciting and nerve-wracking."

"She always knew it was her destiny to go up there. She didn't know when. But she was determined to get there," he said. "This isn't a joy ride for her. She wants to make this feasible for the public. It's more than a 10-day trip. It's a lifetime commitment."

Anousheh Ansari said that, while at the International Space Station, she expected to help with some scientific experiments, to take photos and videos to use to share her experience once back on Earth, to do some ham-radio communications, and to make educational videos illustrating some of the laws of physics.

After her journey, she expects to tour schools to promote interest in science and technology among students.