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.
Falcon 9
Starlink Group 6-88
Space Launch Complex 40 - Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USAA batch of 29 satellites for the Starlink mega-constellation - SpaceX's project for space-based Internet communication system.
Falcon 9
CSG-3
Space Launch Complex 4E - Vandenberg SFB, CA, USACSG-3 is an Earth observation satellite for the Italian Space Agency, part of a reconnaissance constellation using synthetic aperture radars operatin…
Long March 7A
Shijian 29 A-B
201 - Wenchang Space Launch Site, People's Republic of China2 satellites officially described as for "demonstration of new technologies for spatial targets detection" purposes.
Long March 4B
Tianhui 7
Launch Area 94 (SLS-2 / 603) - Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, People's Republic of ChinaA satellite officially described as for cartography purposes, details TBD.
Soyuz 2.1b/Fregat-M
AIST-2T 01 & 02
Cosmodrome Site 1S - Vostochny Cosmodrome, Siberia, Russian FederationA pair of Russian optical Earth observation satellites built by the Progress Rocket Space Centre for obtaining stereo images of the Earth's surface, …
