SpaceX

SpaceX Exploration Technologies Corp.

SpaceX Headquarters during the Iridium-4 Mission, December 2020
Trade name	SpaceX
Company type	Private
Industry	Aerospace
Founded	6 May 2002; 22 years ago (2002-05-06)[1]
Headquarters	Hawthorne, California, U.S. 33°55′15″N 118°19′40″W / 33.9207°N 118.3278°W / 33.9207; -118.3278
Key people	Elon Musk (CEO and CTO) Gwynne Shotwell (President and COO)
Products	Launch vehicles Rocket engines Space capsules Starship (in development) Starlink Landing platforms on drone ships
Owner	Elon Musk Trust (54% equity; 78% voting control)[2]
Number of employees	Est. 7,000[3] (November 2017)
Website	www.spacex.com
Footnotes / references [4][5][6][7]

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American aerospace company in Hawthorne, California. The company makes and launches space rockets and communications satellites (some of which one can use to have a connection to the internet). SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk. SpaceX makes the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, some rocket engines, Dragon spacecraft and Starlink satellites.

SpaceX was the first private company to make a rocket that use liquid propellant that reach orbit (Falcon 1 in 2008). SpaceX was also the first private company to successfully launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft (Dragon in 2010). SpaceX also first landed a multistage rocket astronauts to the International Space Station (Crew Dragon Demo-2 in 2020). SpaceX has launched Falcon 9 rockets over a hundred times.

SpaceX has put a network of Starlink satellites into space. It gives internet service. In 2020, the network (or satellite constellation) became the largest in the world.

As of 2024's first quarter, there are astronauts in space, that were taken there by SpaceX,

• Matthew Dominick
• Michael Barratt
• Jeanette Epps
• Alexander Grebenkin, members on the mission, Crew-8. They are supposed to leave the ISS (to return to Earth) in 2024's third quarter.

In November 2023, the orbital flight test of Super Heavy and Starship, failed; The spaceship and booster separated.^[8] The spaceship came to an altitude of 148 km (92 mi). The spaceship was supposed to fly for 90 minutes, but at 8 minutes 5 seconds of flight, the (onboard) Autonomous flight safety system (or flight termination system) destroyed the spaceship; By that time SpaceX had lost communications with the spacecraft. The flight did not reach orbit. The rocket is supposed to lift 100 metric tons to low Earth orbit and be used many times. The company also has an idea to launch a Starship rocket to Mars.

The company's goal is to make going to space cheap, so humans can colonize Mars.

1. ↑ "California Business Search (C2414622 – Space Exploration Technologies Corp)". California Secretary of State. Archived from the original on 12 March 2017. Retrieved 5 May 2018.
2. ↑ Fred Lambert (17 November 2016). "Elon Musk's stake in SpaceX is actually worth more than his Tesla shares". Retrieved 1 March 2017.
3. ↑ Foust, Jeff (16 November 2017). "Shotwell: I was the 7th employee at SpaceX. We're up to about 7,000 now. #NewSpaceEurope". Retrieved 13 January 2019.
4. ↑ "Gwynne Shotwell: Executive Profile & Biography". Bloomberg. Retrieved 1 March 2017.
5. ↑ W.J. Hennigan (7 June 2013). "How I Made It: SpaceX exec Gwynne Shotwell". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 1 March 2017.
6. ↑ SpaceX Tour – Texas Test Site. spacexchannel. 11 November 2010. Retrieved 23 May 2012.
7. ↑ "SpaceX NASA CRS-6 PressKit Site" (PDF). 12 April 2015. Retrieved 13 April 2015.
8. ↑ https://edition.cnn.com/world/live-news/spacex-starship-launch-scn/index.html. Retrieved 2023-11-18