SpaceX

Falcon 9 became the first rocket to land its first stage after an orbital launch (Dec 21, 2015).

Booster B1021 flew a second time (SES-10) — proving an orbital rocket can be reused, not just recovered.

Booster B1067 reached 32 launches and landings, far past Falcon 9's original 10-flight design life.

SpaceX raised $75B in its IPO (555.6M shares at $135; ~$1.75T valuation), trading on Nasdaq as SPCX from 12 Jun 2026 — the largest IPO in history, dwarfing Saudi Aramco's $29.4B (2019); the book ran >2× oversubscribed (~$150B in orders).

SpaceX flew Starship V3 for the first time (Flight 12, 22 May 2026) — its most powerful version, built for high-rate Starlink launches and future Moon missions. The suborbital test deployed 20 mock + 2 real Starlinks and was called a success despite engine glitches and a missed booster splashdown; full orbital flight is still to come.

The ship from Flight 13, which splashed down in the Indian Ocean on 24 Jul 2026, stayed afloat and intact and was pulled from the water near Christmas Island in late August — the first full Starship to survive a test flight and be recovered rather than sink or break up. SpaceX loaded it onto a semisubmersible vessel for a voyage back to Starbase expected to take months. This is salvage, not reuse: the vehicle was recovered from the ocean, not caught by a tower or landed, and nothing recovered this way has been reflown.

Flight 13 (24 Jul 2026), the second V3 flight, cleared what the debut left undone: it deployed a full batch of 20 Starlink V3 satellites (Flight 12 carried mostly mock-ups), relit a Raptor engine in space, and put the ship down in the Indian Ocean in a soft, precise splashdown that SpaceX later judged accurate enough for a tower catch. The booster half did not work: only 10 of 13 engines relit for Super Heavy's landing burn, about five were firing at the end, and Booster 20 was destroyed on impact in the Gulf. Tower catches, reuse and full orbital flight are still ahead.

SpaceX flew the first demo of Starfall (23 Jun 2026) — a ~2,100 kg disk-shaped reentry capsule, launched on a Falcon 9 from SLC-40 — aimed at a market no reentry vehicle has cracked: returning manufactured goods from orbit (pharmaceuticals, materials) and, eventually, point-to-point terrestrial cargo. The launch and booster landing succeeded, but SpaceX did not publicly disclose the reentry/recovery outcome. A push to make orbital return — not just launch — routine and reusable.

SpaceX launched the first operational batch of 60 Starlink satellites, beginning the first true low-earth-orbit broadband mega-constellation.

Starlink's first direct-to-cell satellites sent text messages to ordinary, unmodified phones — the opening of the phone-to-satellite era.

Starlink passed several million active subscribers across ~8,000 satellites — a self-funding constellation at unmatched scale.