Space Exploration Technologies Corp., doing business as
SpaceX, is a private US aerospace manufacturer and space transportation
services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002
by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the
colonization of Mars. SpaceX has developed the Falcon launch vehicle family and
the Dragon spacecraft family.
SpaceX's achievements include the first privately funded
liquid-propellant rocket to reach orbit (Falcon 1 in 2008), the first private
company to successfully launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft (Dragon in
2010), the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International
Space Station (Dragon in 2012), the first propulsive landing for an orbital
rocket (Falcon 9 in 2015), the first reuse of an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in
2017), and the first private company to launch an object into orbit around the
sun (Falcon Heavy's payload of a Tesla Roadster in 2018). SpaceX has flown 18
resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS) under a partnership
with NASA. NASA also awarded SpaceX a further development contract in 2011 to
develop and demonstrate a human-rated Dragon, which would be used to transport
astronauts to the ISS and return them safely to Earth. SpaceX conducted the
maiden launch of its Crew Dragon spacecraft on a NASA-required demonstration
flight on March 2, 2019 and is set to launch its first crewed Crew Dragon later
in 2019. On 11 March at 8:45 a.m. EST, the SpaceX Crew Dragon completed its
first uncrewed flight that splash-landed in the Atlantic. The flight named Crew
Dragon Demo-1 has demonstrated the Crew Dragon's ability to safely transport
crew to ISS and back.
SpaceX reusable launch system development program: in
December 2015, a Falcon 9 successfully accomplished a propulsive vertical
landing. This was the first such achievement by a rocket for orbital
spaceflight.[17] In April 2016, with the launch of CRS-8, SpaceX successfully
vertically landed the first stage on an ocean drone ship landing platform.[18]
In May 2016, in another first, SpaceX again landed the first stage, but during
a significantly more energetic geostationary transfer orbit mission.[19] In
March 2017, SpaceX became the first to successfully re-launch and land the
first stage of an orbital rocket.[20]
In September 2016, CEO Elon Musk unveiled the Interplanetary
Transport System, a privately funded initiative to develop spaceflight
technology for use in crewed interplanetary spaceflight. In 2017, Musk unveiled
an updated configuration of the system, now named Starship and Super Heavy,
which is planned to be fully reusable and will be the largest rocket ever on
its debut, currently scheduled for the early 2020s