Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is a Hawthorne, California-based aerospace manufacturer, supplier of space transportation companies, and telecommunications organization. Elon Musk launched SpaceX in 2002 to lower space transport costs to allow Mars settlement. SpaceX develops the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch systems, as well as multiple rocket motors, the Cargo Dragon, crew spacecraft, and Starlink communications satellites.

SpaceX's accomplishments include being the first privately funded liquid-propellant rocket to reach Earth's orbit, the first private firm to implement, orbit, and restore a spacecraft, the first private firm to transmit a space probe to the International Space Station, the first vertical landing and vertical kinetic attempt to land for a planetary spacecraft, the first repurpose of an orbital rocket, and the first private firm to send a spacecraft to orbit and the International Space Station. SpaceX has launched the Falcon 9 missile series over a couple hundred.