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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.


Kinetica 1
Success
5 hours, 58 minutes ago
9 satellites
Launch Area 130 - Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, People's Republic of China

Share ride of 9 satellites to sun-synchronous orbit: * Satellite 813 (United Arab Emirates) * Jilin-1 Gaofen 07B-01/07C-01/07D-01 * Dongpo-15 …


Falcon 9
Success
14 hours, 45 minutes ago
NROL-77
Space Launch Complex 40 - Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA

Classified payload for the US National Reconnaissance Office.


Long March 3B/E
Success
18 hours, 53 minutes ago
TJSW-22
Launch Complex 3 (LC-3/LA-1) - Xichang Satellite Launch Center, People's Republic of China

Chinese classified satellite claimed to be for communication technology test purposes. Actual mission not known.


Long March 4B
Success
1 day, 6 hours ago
Yaogan 47
Launch Area 94 (SLS-2 / 603) - Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, People's Republic of China

The Yaogan 47 is a Chinese military “remote sensing” satellite of unknown purposes.


Falcon 9
Success
1 day, 11 hours ago
Starlink Group 6-92
Launch Complex 39A - Kennedy Space Center, FL, USA

A batch of 29 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.