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Rob Ferl

American - (BO)

Occasional Spaceflight


Rob is a distinguished professor and director of the Astraeus Space Institute at the University of Florida. He has spent his career studying how living organisms respond to extreme conditions, especially microgravity. He and his colleagues have worked with NASA astronauts to conduct numerous experiments on the International Space Station that have shown that plants turn certain genes on and off in response to changes in gravity. They were also the first to prove that plants could grow in lunar soil collected during the Apollo missions. Ferl is also a national leader in space policy, having recently chaired a National Academies of Sciences committee on the direction of space biology research over the next decade.

New Shepard | NS-26

Blue Origin | United States of America
Corn Ranch, Van Horn, TX, USA
Aug. 29, 2024, 1:07 p.m.
Status: Success
Mission:

Twenty-sixth flight of New Shepard carrying six passengers.

Suborbital NS-4 - Flight Proven ( ) Corn Ranch, 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
3 days, 17 hours ago
Starlink Group 9-6
Space Launch Complex 4E - Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA

A batch of 21 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.


Falcon 9
Success
4 days, 10 hours ago
BlueBird Block 1
Space Launch Complex 40 - Cape Canaveral, FL, USA

First five satellites for SpaceMobile’s cellphone-compatible broadband constellation.


Soyuz 2.1a
Success
5 days, 2 hours ago
Soyuz MS-26
31/6 - Baikonur Cosmodrome, Republic of Kazakhstan

Soyuz MS-26 will carry two cosmonauts and one astronaut to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome i…


Falcon 9
Success
6 days, 9 hours ago
Polaris Dawn
Launch Complex 39A - Kennedy Space Center, FL, USA

First mission of the privately funded Polaris program. The goal of this mission, lasting up to five days in orbit, is to fly higher than previous Dra…


Falcon 9
Success
1 week, 3 days ago
NROL-113
Space Launch Complex 4E - Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA

Third batch of satellites for a reconnaissance satellite constellation built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman for the National Reconnaissance Office to…