June 12 (Reuters) – SpaceX made its stock market debut on Friday,as investors backed CEO Elon Musk’s vision for an empire stretching from reusable rockets to orbital AI at a valuation that ranks among the world’s biggest.
Here is a timeline of SpaceX’s journey to the blockbuster IPO:
March 2002 – Elon Musk starts SpaceX using money he made from the sale of PayPal.
March 2006 – SpaceX launches its first rocket, the Falcon 1, which fails.
September 2008 – Falcon 1 launched successfully and becomes the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to reach Earth’s orbit.
December 2008 – SpaceX secures its first major contract with NASA to ferry cargo and supplies to the International Space Station.
May 2012 – A Dragon capsule is taken to space by a Falcon 9 rocket, making it the first private spacecraft to dock at the ISS.
June 2015 – Falcon 9 explodes mid-air.
December 2015 – First successful vertical landing of Falcon 9, marking the first controlled recovery by a large rocket after delivering a payload into orbit.
February 2018 – The first Falcon Heavy launch carries Musk’s Tesla Roadster and its mannequin driver, Starman, into space.
April 2019 – Crew Dragon test vehicle explodes during ground test.
May 2019 – SpaceX starts launching Starlink satellites, a constellation capable of beaming signals for high-speed internet service to paying customers around the globe.
October 2020 – SpaceX completes the 100th successful flight of a Falcon rocket since Falcon 1 first flew to orbit in 2008.
November 2020 – SpaceX Crew-1 mission — the first operational mission under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
April 2021 – NASA awards SpaceX the contract for the first commercial human lander on the moon, part of its Artemis program.
September 2021 – SpaceX launches the first all-civilian crew ever to circle the Earth from space.
November 2021 – NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission launched into an interplanetary transfer orbit aboard a SpaceX rocket, marking the world’s first test of a planetary defense system designed to prevent a potential asteroid collision with Earth.
April 2023 – First Starship rocket explodes after losing control.
November 2023 – Starship launch fails minutes after reaching space.
November 2023 – A U.S. judge blocks the U.S. Department of Justice from pursuing an administrative case accusing SpaceX of illegally refusing to hire refugees and asylum recipients.
September 2024 – The SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission carries out its first privately managed spacewalk.
January 2025 – SpaceX’s Starship rocket breaks up in space minutes after launching from Texas, forcing flights over the Gulf of Mexico to alter course to avoid falling debris.
June 2025 – Starship explodes during a ground test.
February 2026 – SpaceX acquires Musk’s AI startup xAI in a record deal worth $250 billion, unifying the world’s richest man’s AI and space ambitions by combining the rocket-and-satellite company with the maker of the Grok chatbot.
February 2026 – SpaceX shifted its focus from Mars to building a “self‑growing city” on the moon, Musk says.
March 2026 – NASA official says the Starship has accumulated at least two years of development delays since NASA picked the rocket as an astronaut moon lander in 2021, and is expected to require more time to clear remaining hurdles before landing on the moon.
April 2026 – SpaceX confidentially files for its blockbuster U.S. initial public offering, laying the groundwork for what could be the biggest stock market flotation ever.
May 2026 – SpaceX publicly files for its long-awaited U.S. IPO.
June 2026 – SpaceX sets its IPO price at $135 a share, seeking to raise a record-breaking $75 billion.
June 2026 – SpaceX agrees a multi-year cloud services deal with Alphabet’s Google.
June 2026 – SpaceX raises record $75 billion in biggest-ever U.S. IPO.
June 2026 – SpaceX begins trading on the Nasdaq at a valuation of about $1.96 trillion.
(Reporting by Prakhar Srivastava and Arasu Kannagi Basil in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed and Joyjeet Das)
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