SpaceX

SpaceX is a private American space company founded in 2002 by entrepreneur Elon Musk. It set out to do something nobody had managed before: dramatically cut the cost of space travel by building reusable rockets that land themselves and fly again. SpaceX has since become the most active launch company in the world, regularly carrying astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, building a constellation of thousands of internet satellites called Starlink, and developing the giant Starship spacecraft intended one day to take humans to Mars.

• Founded2002By Elon Musk
• First successful orbital launchSeptember 2008Falcon 1 flight 4
• First booster landingDecember 2015Falcon 9 returns to Cape Canaveral
• First astronauts to ISSMay 2020Crew Dragon Demo-2
• Starlink satellitesapprox. 6,000+And growing every month
• Starship test flightsSeveral since 2023Working towards orbital and Moon/Mars use

The early days

SpaceX was founded in 2002 by South African-born entrepreneur Elon Musk, who had already made a fortune from PayPal. Musk's goal from the start was to make humans a "multi-planet species" by dramatically lowering the cost of spaceflight. In the early days SpaceX nearly went bankrupt: its first three rockets, called Falcon 1, all blew up on launch between 2006 and 2008. Musk later said he had money for one more flight; if Falcon 1 number 4 failed, SpaceX would have shut down.

It did not fail. On 28 September 2008, Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to reach orbit. SpaceX immediately won a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, which gave it the money to build the bigger and more capable Falcon 9.

Falcon 9 and the rocket that lands

The Falcon 9 is SpaceX's workhorse rocket. It first launched in 2010 and has flown hundreds of times since. The really revolutionary feature is that the first stage of Falcon 9 can fly back from space and land vertically on a launch pad or on a floating drone-ship out at sea. It can then be inspected, refurbished and flown again, sometimes within weeks.

The first successful Falcon 9 booster landing happened on 21 December 2015, when a booster touched down upright at Cape Canaveral after launching satellites into orbit. Many SpaceX boosters have now flown more than 20 missions each. Reusing the first stage typically saves 70 to 80% of the cost of the rocket, which has revolutionised the space industry. SpaceX currently launches more rockets per year than any country except China.

Dragon: carrying cargo and crew

SpaceX has also built its own crewed spacecraft, the Dragon. The original cargo Dragon began flying supplies to the International Space Station in 2012. The newer Crew Dragon began carrying astronauts to the ISS in May 2020, becoming the first American spacecraft to do so since the Space Shuttle retired in 2011.

Crew Dragon is fully autonomous: it can dock with the ISS without the astronauts having to fly it manually. It can carry up to seven people (though usually only 4) and re-enters the atmosphere protected by a heat shield made of a material called PICA-X. It then splashes down in the ocean under parachutes. Several Crew Dragon capsules have been reused multiple times.

Starlink: internet from space

SpaceX has also built and launched a giant constellation of internet satellites called Starlink. The idea is to provide fast internet to anywhere on Earth using thousands of small satellites in low Earth orbit. As of 2025, Starlink has over 6,000 satellites in orbit (more than half of all active satellites in space) and millions of customers in over 100 countries.

Starlink is also controversial. Astronomers worry about the bright reflective satellites streaking through telescope images. Engineers worry about the risk of space collisions in the increasingly crowded low Earth orbit. And the long-term effects on the night sky and the atmosphere are not yet fully understood.

Fact In February 2018, SpaceX launched its biggest rocket at the time, the Falcon Heavy, on its first test flight. Instead of a regular dummy payload, the rocket carried Elon Musk's own red Tesla Roadster, with a mannequin in a spacesuit nicknamed "Starman" sitting in the driver's seat. The car was launched on a path that takes it past Mars and out into deep space. It is still out there, occasionally being tracked by amateur astronomers.

Starship: the road to Mars

SpaceX's biggest current project is Starship: a fully reusable rocket-and-spacecraft pair so big it dwarfs even the Apollo-era Saturn V. The Starship system is meant to be capable of carrying up to 100 people and 150 tonnes of cargo, fully reusable, and (eventually) refuelled in orbit so it can travel to the Moon, Mars and beyond. NASA has selected a version of Starship as the lander for its upcoming Artemis Moon missions.

Starship is still in early test flights, and several of the giant prototypes have been lost in spectacular explosions during testing. But the basic idea (build cheap, test fast, fail loudly, learn quickly and build the next one bigger) is the same one that took SpaceX from the brink of bankruptcy in 2008 to launching most of the world's satellites today.

Did you know? SpaceX has saved enormous amounts of money by manufacturing as much as possible in-house. Almost every Falcon 9 component, from the rocket engines to the avionics to the parachutes, is built in SpaceX's own factories. Traditional aerospace companies often have hundreds of suppliers; SpaceX makes its rocket engines, Dragon spacecraft and even the seats on Crew Dragon in its own facilities.

Deeper dive: why reusability matters

Before SpaceX, almost every rocket ever launched was used once. The first stage burned its fuel, separated from the rest of the rocket, and fell into the ocean or burned up in the atmosphere. This is the equivalent of throwing away an entire airliner after every single flight: you would expect ticket prices to be astronomical. And they were: launching a satellite cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 changed the maths. By recovering and reflying the first stage (which is the most expensive part of the rocket), the company has dropped the cost of putting a kilogram of cargo into low Earth orbit from around $20,000 in the early 2000s to under $3,000 today. Starship is designed to push that figure even lower, possibly under $100 per kilogram if it ever flies as advertised. That kind of cost reduction would open up entire new categories of space activity, from large-scale lunar bases to commercial space telescopes.

Other companies are now racing to catch up. Blue Origin (founded by Jeff Bezos), Rocket Lab in New Zealand, and several Chinese state and private companies are all developing partially or fully reusable rockets. The era of throwaway rockets is rapidly coming to an end.

For the historical context see history of space travel and Apollo missions. For the current generation of human spaceflight see the ISS.