SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corp., more commonly known as SpaceX, is a private American aerospace company and space transportation company headquartered at the Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the company has made numerous advances in rocket propulsion, reusable launch vehicles, human spaceflight and satellite constellation technology., SpaceX is the world's dominant space launch provider, its launch cadence eclipsing all others, including private competitors and national programs like the Chinese space program. SpaceX, NASA, and the United States Armed Forces work closely together by means of governmental contracts.
SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk in 2002 with a vision of decreasing the costs of space launches, paving the way to a self-sustaining colony on Mars. In 2008, Falcon 1 successfully launched into orbit after three failed launch attempts. The company then moved towards the development of the larger Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon 1 capsule to satisfy NASA's COTS contracts for deliveries to the International Space Station. By 2012, SpaceX finished all COTS test flights and began delivering Commercial Resupply Services missions to the International Space Station. Also around that time, SpaceX started developing hardware to make the Falcon 9 first stage reusable. The company demonstrated the first successful first-stage landing in 2015 and re-launch of the first stage in 2017. Falcon Heavy, built from three Falcon 9 boosters, first flew in 2018 after a more than decade-long development process. As of May 2025, the company's Falcon 9 rockets have landed and flown again more than 450 times, reaching 1–3 launches a week.
These milestones delivered the company much-needed investment and SpaceX sought to diversify its sources of income. In 2019, the first operational satellite of the Starlink internet satellite constellation came online. In subsequent years, Starlink generated the bulk of SpaceX's income and paved the way for its Starshield military counterpart. In 2020, SpaceX began to operate its Dragon 2 capsules to deliver crewed missions for NASA and private entities. Around this time, SpaceX began building test prototypes for Starship, which is the largest launch vehicle in history and aims to fully realize the company's vision of a fully reusable, cost-effective and adaptable launch vehicle. SpaceX is also developing its own space suit and astronaut via its Polaris program as well as developing the human lander for lunar missions under NASA's Artemis program. SpaceX is not publicly traded but is expected to have an initial public offering in 2026. A space industry newspaper estimated that SpaceX has a revenue of over in 2024, while a 2025 offer to buy internal shares valued SpaceX at $800 billion, making it the world's most valuable private company.
History
2001–2004: Founding
In early 2001, Elon Musk met Robert Zubrin and donated to his Mars Society, joining its board of directors for a short time. He gave a plenary talk at their fourth convention where he announced Mars Oasis, a project to land a greenhouse and grow plants on Mars. Musk initially attempted to acquire a Dnepr launch vehicle for the project through Russian contacts from Jim Cantrell.Musk returned with his team to Moscow, this time bringing Michael Griffin, who later became the 11th Administrator of NASA, but found the Russians increasingly unreceptive. On the flight home, Musk announced he could start a company to build the affordable rockets they needed instead. By applying vertical integration, using inexpensive commercial off-the-shelf components when possible, and adopting the modular approach of modern software engineering, Musk believed SpaceX could significantly cut launch costs.
In early 2002, Elon Musk started to look for staff for his company, soon to be named SpaceX. Musk approached five people for the initial positions at the fledgling company, including Griffin, who declined the position of Chief Engineer, Jim Cantrell and John Garvey, rocket engineer Tom Mueller, and Chris Thompson. SpaceX was first headquartered in a warehouse in El Segundo, California. Early SpaceX employees, such as Tom Mueller, Gwynne Shotwell, and Chris Thompson, came from neighboring TRW and Boeing corporations. By November 2005, the company had 160 employees. Musk personally interviewed and approved all of SpaceX's early employees.
Musk has stated that one of his goals with SpaceX is to decrease the cost and improve the reliability of access to space, ultimately by a factor of ten.
2005–2009: Falcon 1 and first orbital launches
SpaceX developed its first orbital launch vehicle, the Falcon 1, with internal funding. The Falcon 1 was an expendable two-stage-to-orbit small-lift launch vehicle. The total development cost of Falcon 1 was approximately to.The Falcon rocket series was named after Star Warss Millennium Falcon fictional spacecraft.
In 2004, SpaceX protested against NASA to the Government Accountability Office because of a sole-source contract awarded to Kistler Aerospace. Before the GAO could respond, NASA withdrew the contract, and formed the COTS program. In 2005, SpaceX announced plans to pursue a human-rated commercial space program through the end of the decade, a program that would later become the Dragon spacecraft. In 2006, the company was selected by NASA and awarded to provide crew and cargo resupply demonstration contracts to the International Space Station under the COTS program.
The first two Falcon 1 launches were purchased by the United States Department of Defense under the DARPA Falcon Project which evaluated new U.S. launch vehicles suitable for use in hypersonic missile delivery for Prompt Global Strike. The first three launches of the rocket, between 2006 and 2008, all resulted in failures, which almost ended the company. Financing for Tesla Motors had failed, as well, and consequently Tesla, SolarCity, and Musk personally were all nearly bankrupt at the same time. Musk was reportedly "waking from nightmares, screaming and in physical pain" because of the stress.
The financial situation started to turn around with the first successful launch achieved on the fourth attempt on September 28, 2008. Musk split his remaining between SpaceX and Tesla, and NASA awarded the first Commercial Resupply Services contract awarding to SpaceX in December, thus financially saving the company. Based on these factors and the further business operations they enabled, the Falcon 1 was soon retired following its second successful, and fifth total, launch in July 2009. This allowed SpaceX to focus company resources on the development of a larger orbital rocket, the Falcon 9. Gwynne Shotwell was also promoted to company president at the time, for her role in successfully negotiating the CRS contract with the NASA Associate Administrator Bill Gerstenmaier.
2010–2012: Falcon 9, Dragon, and NASA contracts
SpaceX originally intended to follow its light Falcon 1 launch vehicle with an intermediate capacity vehicle, the Falcon 5. The company instead decided in 2005 to proceed with the development of the Falcon 9, a reusable heavier lift vehicle. Development of the Falcon 9 was accelerated by NASA, which committed to purchasing several commercial flights if specific capabilities were demonstrated. This started with seed money from the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program in 2006. The overall contract award was to provide development funding for the Dragon spacecraft, Falcon 9, and demonstration launches of Falcon 9 with Dragon. As part of this contract, the Falcon 9 launched for the first time in June 2010 with the Dragon Spacecraft Qualification Unit, using a mockup of the Dragon spacecraft.The first operational Dragon spacecraft was launched in December 2010 aboard COTS Demo Flight 1, the Falcon 9's second flight, and safely returned to Earth after two orbits, completing all its mission objectives. By December 2010, the SpaceX production line was manufacturing one Falcon 9 and Dragon every three months.
In April 2011, as part of its second-round Commercial Crew Development program, NASA issued a contract for SpaceX to develop an integrated launch escape system for Dragon in preparation for human-rating it as a crew transport vehicle to the ISS. NASA awarded SpaceX a fixed-price Space Act Agreement to produce a detailed design of the crew transportation system in August 2012.
In early 2012, approximately two-thirds of SpaceX stock was owned by Musk and his seventy million shares were then estimated to be worth on private markets, valuing SpaceX at. In May 2012, with the Dragon C2+ launch, Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. After the flight, the company private equity valuation nearly doubled to or /share. By that time, SpaceX had operated on total funding of approximately over its first decade of operation. Of this, private equity provided approximately, with Musk investing approximately and other investors having put in about.
SpaceX's active reusability test program began in late 2012 with testing low-altitude, low-speed aspects of the landing technology. The Falcon 9 prototypes performed vertical takeoffs and landings. High-velocity, high-altitude tests of the booster atmospheric return technology began in late 2013.
2013–2015: Commercial launches and rapid growth
SpaceX launched the first commercial mission for a private customer in 2013. In 2014, SpaceX won nine contracts out of the 20 that were openly competed worldwide. That year Arianespace requested that European governments provide additional subsidies to face the competition from SpaceX. Beginning in 2014, SpaceX capabilities and pricing also began to affect the market for launch of U.S. military payloads, which for nearly a decade had been dominated by the large U.S. launch provider United Launch Alliance. The monopoly had allowed launch costs by the U.S. provider to rise to over over the years. In September 2014, NASA's Director of Commercial Spaceflight, Kevin Crigler, awarded SpaceX the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract to finalize the development of the Crew Transportation System. The contract included several technical and certification milestones, an uncrewed flight test, a crewed flight test, and six operational missions after certification.In January 2015, SpaceX raised in funding from Google and Fidelity Investments, in exchange for 8.33% of the company, establishing the company valuation at approximately. The same month SpaceX announced the development of a new satellite constellation, called Starlink, to provide global broadband internet service with 4,000 satellites.
The Falcon 9 had its first major failure in late June 2015, when the seventh ISS resupply mission, CRS-7 exploded two minutes into the flight. The problem was traced to a failed two-foot-long steel strut that held a helium pressure vessel, which broke free due to the force of acceleration. This caused a breach and allowed high-pressure helium to escape into the low-pressure propellant tank, causing the failure.