SpaceX

SpaceX is an American aerospace company founded in 2002 that helped usher in the era of commercial spaceflight. It was the first private company to successfully launch and return a spacecraft from Earth orbit and the first to launch a crewed spacecraft and dock it with the International Space Station (ISS). Headquarters are in Hawthorne, California.

Founding and early development

SpaceX was formed by entrepreneur Elon Musk in the hopes of revolutionizing the aerospace industry and making affordable spaceflight a reality. The company entered the arena with the Falcon 1 rocket, a two-stage liquid-fueled craft designed to send small satellites into orbit. The Falcon 1 was vastly cheaper to build and operate than its competitors, a field largely populated by spacecraft built by publicly owned and government-funded companies such as Lockheed Martin (LMT) and Boeing (BA). Part of the rocket’s cost-effectiveness was made possible by the SpaceX-developed Merlin engine, a cheaper alternative to those used by other companies. SpaceX also focused on making reusable rockets (other launch vehicles are generally made for one-time use).

In March 2006 SpaceX made its first Falcon 1 launch, which began successfully but ended prematurely because of a fuel leak and fire. By this time, however, the company had already earned millions of dollars in launching orders, many of them from the U.S. government. In August of that year SpaceX was a winner of a NASA competition for funds to build and demonstrate spacecraft that could potentially service the ISS after the decommissioning of the space shuttle. Falcon 1 launches that failed to attain Earth orbit followed in March 2007 and August 2008, but in September 2008 SpaceX became the first privately owned company to send a liquid-fueled rocket into orbit. Three months later it won a NASA contract for servicing the ISS that was worth more than $1 billion.

Falcon 9, Dragon, and missions to the ISS

In 2010 SpaceX first launched its Falcon 9, a bigger craft so named for its use of nine engines, and the following year it broke ground on a launch site for the Falcon Heavy, a craft the company hoped would be the first to break the $1,000-per-pound-to-orbit cost barrier and that might one day be used to transport astronauts into deep space. In December 2010 the company reached another milestone, becoming the first commercial company to release a spacecraft—the Dragon capsule—into orbit and successfully return it to Earth. Dragon again made history on May 25, 2012, when it became the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the ISS, to which it successfully delivered cargo. In August that year, SpaceX announced that it had won a contract from NASA to develop a successor to the space shuttle that would transport astronauts into space.

The Falcon 9 was designed so that its first stage could be reused. In 2015 a Falcon 9 first stage successfully returned to Earth near its launch site. Beginning in 2016, SpaceX also began using drone ships for rocket stage landings. A rocket stage that had returned to Earth was successfully reused in a 2017 launch. That same year, a Dragon capsule was reused on a flight to the ISS. The Falcon Heavy rocket had its first test flight in 2018. Two of the three first stages landed successfully; the third hit the water near the drone ship. That Falcon Heavy did not carry a satellite but instead placed into orbit around the Sun a Tesla Roadster with a mannequin in a space suit buckled into the driver’s seat. The first operational flight of the Falcon Heavy launched on April 11, 2019.

Starlink and commercial operations

In 2019 SpaceX began launching satellites for its Starlink megaconstellation, which provides satellite Internet service. About 50 Starlink satellites are launched at a time on a Falcon 9 flight. As of January 2026, Starlink had 9,633 active satellites, about two-thirds of all active satellites in orbit. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has authorized SpaceX to deploy up to 15,000 second-generation Starlink satellites, and SpaceX has said it ultimately aims to deploy a constellation numbering in the tens of thousands.

The first crewed flight of a Dragon capsule to the ISS launched on May 30, 2020, with astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken. SpaceX also announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy–Starship system (originally called the BFR [Big Falcon Rocket]). The Super Heavy first stage would be capable of lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for several purposes, including providing fast transportation between cities on Earth and building bases on the Moon and Mars.

What’s next for SpaceX

SpaceX plans to use its Starship for missions beyond low Earth orbit, including supporting NASA’s Artemis program for lunar exploration and ultimately for crewed missions to Mars.

As it prepared for a potential initial public offering that could take place as early as 2026, SpaceX combined with xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, which develops the Grok AI chatbot. xAI had previously acquired the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), linking SpaceX more closely to Musk’s broader AI and communications businesses.

In April 2026, SpaceX entered into an agreement with AI start-up Cursor, a maker of AI-powered coding tools, that gives it the option to acquire the company for $60 billion later in the year. Alternatively, SpaceX could pay $10 billion for joint development work. The companies said the partnership would focus on developing AI systems for coding and other knowledge-based tasks, using SpaceX’s computing infrastructure and Cursor’s software tools.