SpaceX

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Dragon capsule by SpaceX docking with the International Space Station on May 25, 2012—the first time a commercial spacecraft did so.

SpaceX/NASA

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). Headquartered in Starbase, Texas, the company has more than 22,000 employees worldwide and operates launch, manufacturing, and testing facilities across the United States.

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Launch of a Falcon 1 rocket from the SpaceX launch site on Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, September 28, 2008.

Chris Thompson/SpaceX

Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of making spaceflight more affordable and transforming the aerospace industry. Its first rocket was the Falcon 1, a two-stage liquid-fueled craft designed to send small satellites into orbit. The Falcon 1 was vastly cheaper to build and operate than competing rockets, many of which were made by established aerospace companies such as Lockheed Martin (LMT) and Boeing (BA). Part of the rocket’s cost advantage came from the SpaceX-developed Merlin engine. SpaceX also focused on making reusable rockets rather than launch vehicles intended for a single flight.

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The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft secured aboard the deck of a recovery ship after its first successful orbital flight, December 8, 2010.

Mike Altenhofen/SpaceX

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 the following August, SpaceX won a NASA competition for funding 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 worth more than $1 billion to service the ISS.

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The landing of a Falcon 9 first stage at Cape Canaveral, Florida, December 21, 2015. This was the first time a rocket stage launched a spacecraft into orbit and then returned to a landing on Earth.

© SpaceX Handout—Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

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.

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Launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida, February 6, 2018.

Cristobal Herrera—EPA-EFE/Shutterstock.com

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.

In 2019, SpaceX began launching satellites for its Starlink megaconstellation, which provides satellite Internet service. As of June 2026, Starlink had more than 10,200 satellites in orbit and 12 million subscribers. 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.

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.

In February 2026, SpaceX acquired xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company and developer of the Grok chatbot. The deal also brought X (formerly Twitter), which xAI had acquired in 2025, under SpaceX.

SpaceX subsequently established artificial intelligence as one of its three main business segments, alongside space and connectivity. The former xAI operation was renamed SpaceXAI in July. In October, Musk said it would be renamed SpaceXSI, although the change hadn’t yet taken effect.

Long one of the world’s most valuable private companies, SpaceX completed its initial public offering (IPO) in June 2026, selling 555.6 million shares at $135 each. The offering—the largest IPO in history—raised $75 billion and valued the company at about $1.77 trillion. After SpaceX shares began trading, Musk became the world’s first trillionaire.

In August 2026, SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, an AI start-up that develops coding tools used by software developers to generate, edit, and review computer code. Cursor became a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX, further expanding the company’s artificial intelligence business.