Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a grand goal of sending humans to Mars and colonizing Earth's neighboring planet.
Today, the company is sprawling, a dominant force in the commercial space industry, contracting with NASA to send a crewed mission to the Moon.
It's also behind the satellite internet business Starlink, the enterprise's financial engine. Its reusable rocket technology has reduced the cost of launching payloads to orbit.
The company is developing its mammoth Starship rocket – which has a test launch slated for as soon as Thursday – for Moon exploration and the much grander aim of taking humans to Mars. However, it must demonstrate significantly more progress before either of those ambitions comes to fruition.
Earlier this year, Musk merged his company xAI into SpaceX and is now racing to build out space data centers.
