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Kenneth Lafferty Hess

American - (BO)

Occasional Spaceflight

Date of Birth: Jan. 22, 1953
Age: 72


Ken is a software engineer and entrepreneur who shaped today's technology-based family history industry when he developed the Family Tree Maker product line in the 1990s. The company was acquired by Ancestry.com in 2003. In 2001, Ken gave back by founding Science Buddies, a K-12 nonprofit created to level the playing field and improve STEM literacy by inspiring students through free, personalized, hands-on projects in all areas of science, including space exploration. Science Buddies has reached one-quarter billion users. Ken’s lifelong passion for space exploration is in his DNA, with numerous early American pioneers in his mother’s lineage and many engineers and technicians in his father’s.

New Shepard | NS-25

Blue Origin | United States of America
Corn Ranch, Van Horn, TX, USA
May 19, 2024, 2:35 p.m.
Status: Success
Mission:

Twenty-fifth flight of New Shepard carrying six passengers.

Suborbital NS-4 - Flight Proven ( ) Corn Ranch Landing Pad, West Texas
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CEO: Jeff Bezos

Blue Origin is an American privately funded aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight services company set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos with its headquarters in Kent, Washington. The company is developing technologies to enable private human access to space with the goal to dramatically lower costs and increase reliability. Blue Origin currently launches its New Shepard sub-orbital vehicle from its West Texas launch site, they are currently constructing a launch pad for their orbital vehicle New Glenn at Cape Canaveral LC-36.


Falcon 9
Success
12 hours, 2 minutes ago
Starlink Group 12-22
Space Launch Complex 40 - Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA

A batch of 23 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.


Falcon 9
Success
1 day, 6 hours ago
Starlink Group 11-16
Space Launch Complex 4E - Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA

A batch of 27 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.


Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat-M
Success
1 day, 20 hours ago
Kosmos 2588
43/4 (43R) - Plesetsk Cosmodrome, Russian Federation

Unknown classified payload for the Russian military.


Kinetica 1
Success
4 days, 1 hour ago
6 satellites
Launch Area 130 - Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, People's Republic of China

Carried 6 satellites to Sun-synchronous orbit, including commercial Earth observation satellites Taijing-3-04 & Taijing-4-02A: * Taijing-3-04 * T…


Falcon 9
Success
4 days, 2 hours ago
Starlink Group 12-15
Space Launch Complex 40 - Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA

A batch of 23 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.