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Kenneth Lafferty Hess

American - (BO)

Occasional Spaceflight

Date of Birth: Jan. 22, 1953
Age: 73


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
1 day, 3 hours ago
NROL-179
Space Launch Complex 4E - Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA

Fourteenth batch of satellites for a reconnaissance satellite constellation built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman for the National Reconnaissance Offi…


Ariane 64
Success
3 days ago
Amazon Leo (LE-03)
Ariane Launch Area 4 - Guiana Space Centre, French Guiana

Amazon Leo, formerly known as Project Kuiper, is a mega constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit that will offer broadband internet access, thi…


Falcon 9
Success
3 days, 6 hours ago
BlueBird Block 2 #3-5
Space Launch Complex 40 - Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA

AST SpaceMobile’s Block 2 BlueBird satellites are designed to deliver up to 10 times the bandwidth capacity of the BlueBird Block 1 satellites, requi…


Kuaizhou 11
Success
3 days, 8 hours ago
CentiSpace-1 Group 05
Launch Area 95A - Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, People's Republic of China

Note: Unofficial reports indicate there may be 1 or more additional satellites that failed to separate from the upper stage, however this is not offi…


Long March 12
Success
3 days, 9 hours ago
SatNet LEO Group 22
Commercial LC-2 - Wenchang Space Launch Site, People's Republic of China

A batch of 9 Low Earth Orbit communication satellites for the Chinese state owned SatNet constellation operated by the China Satellite Network Group.…