SpaceX completes 20 years: Here's what Elon Musk says

Founder Elon Musk on Tuesday congratulated SpaceX and its team on the company’s 20th anniversary, which he founded on March 14, 2002, with an aim of taking people to Mars.  

  

“Congratulations SpaceX team for all that you have accomplished!,” Musk tweeted.  
 

  

Musk was replying to a video shared by SpaceX’s official Twitter account, which showed archival footage of rocket launches and mission control celebrations. The video opens by showing a much younger Elon Musk celebrating the first few successful launches of the company. The highlight reel included shots of the Dragon capsule in space, satellite deployments and Starship prototype tests.   

  

"Today we celebrate the founding of SpaceX and 20 years of accomplishments by this incredible team -- here's to creating a future that we can all get excited about," SpaceX tweeted.  

  

The video ends on a lingering shot of a Starship poised upon its giant first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy. It is scheduled to launch on an orbital test flight after the US Federal Aviation Administration conducts an environmental assessment of Starship launch activities. The review has been delayed several times and is now expected to be complete by March 28. The futuristic vehicle hasn't reached orbit yet, but it's designed to eventually carry humans to the moon and Mars and even around Earth as an alternative to flying on aeroplanes.  

  

SpaceX, headquartered in Hawthorne, California is now worth $74 billion and holds over 60 per cent share of the $3.6 billion global commercial satellite launch market. The video doesn't touch upon some controversies that have cropped up with SpaceX's growth — for instance, its plans to expand Starlink considerably. NASA is among the entities worried about the constellation's potential impact on space traffic management.  

  

The American aerospace company was the first private company to successfully launch and return a spacecraft from Earth orbit and the first to launch a crewed spacecraft and dock it with the International Space Station (ISS).