Claim: SpaceX is a private establishment.

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation , better known as SpaceX , is an American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company headquartered in Hawthorne , California . It was founded in 2002 by entrepreneur Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars . SpaceX has since developed the Falcon launch vehicle family and the Dragon spacecraft family , which both currently deliver payloads into Earth orbit .   SpaceX 's achievements include the first privately funded liquid-propellant rocket to reach orbit -LRB- Falcon 1 in 2008 -RRB- ; the first privately funded company to successfully launch , orbit , and recover a spacecraft -LRB- Dragon in 2010 -RRB- ; the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station -LRB- Dragon in 2012 -RRB- ; the first propulsive landing for an orbital rocket -LRB- Falcon 9 in 2015 -RRB- ; and the first reuse of an orbital rocket -LRB- Falcon 9 in 2017 -RRB- . , SpaceX has since flown ten missions to the International Space Station -LRB- ISS -RRB- under a cargo resupply contract . 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 announced in 2011 that they were beginning a privately funded reusable launch system technology development program . In December 2015 , a first stage was flown back to a landing pad near the launch site , where it successfully accomplished a propulsive vertical landing . This was the first such achievement by a rocket for orbital spaceflight . In April 2016 , with the launch of CRS-8 , SpaceX successfully vertically landed a first stage on an ocean drone-ship landing platform . In May 2016 , in another first , SpaceX again landed a first stage , but during a significantly more energetic geostationary transfer orbit mission . In March 2017 , SpaceX became the first to successfully re-launch and land the first stage of an orbital rocket .   In September 2016 , CEO Elon Musk unveiled the mission architecture of the Interplanetary Transport System program , an ambitious privately funded initiative to develop spaceflight technology for use in manned interplanetary spaceflight , and which , if demand emerges , could lead to sustainable human settlements on Mars over the long term . This is the main purpose this System was designed for . In 2017 , Elon Musk announced that the company had been contracted by two private individuals to send them in a Dragon spacecraft on a free return trajectory around the Moon . Provisionally launching in 2018 , this could become the first instance of lunar tourism .