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.
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.
Minotaur IV
NROL-174
Space Launch Complex 8 - Vandenberg SFB, CA, USAClassified payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office.
New Shepard
NS-31
West Texas Suborbital Launch Site/ Corn Ranch - Corn Ranch, Van Horn, TX, USANS-31 is the 11th crewed flight for the New Shepard program and the 31st in its history.
Falcon 9
Starlink Group 6-73
Space Launch Complex 40 - Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USAA batch of 27 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.
Falcon 9
Starlink Group 12-17
Launch Complex 39A - Kennedy Space Center, FL, USAA batch of 21 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.
Falcon 9
NROL-192
Space Launch Complex 4E - Vandenberg SFB, CA, USANinth batch of satellites for a reconnaissance satellite constellation built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman for the National Reconnaissance Office to…
