SpaceX

SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) is an American aerospace company founded by Elon Musk in 2002, with the goal of reducing the cost of spaceflight and ultimately enabling the colonization of Mars. Once headquartered in Hawthorne, California, the company is now headquartered at Starbase, near Brownsville, Texas.

SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches its own rockets and spacecraft. Its workhorse Falcon 9 and heavy-lift Falcon Heavy are partially reusable orbital launch vehicles, while the Dragon capsule carries cargo and crew to the International Space Station. The company is also developing Starship, a fully reusable super-heavy launch system intended for deep-space missions.

As of 2026 SpaceX remains the world's most active launch provider, flying Falcon 9 at a high cadence to deploy its Starlink satellite constellation and customer payloads while continuing integrated flight tests of Starship from Starbase. It pioneered orbital-class rocket reusability and the first crewed orbital flight by a private company.