Major achievements of SpaceX are in the reuse of orbital-class launch

vehicles and cost reduction in the space launch industry. Most notable
of these being the continued landings and relaunches of the first stage
of Falcon 9. As of March 2020, SpaceX has used a single first-stage
booster, B1048, at most five times. SpaceX is defined as a private
space company and thus its achievements can also be counted as firsts
by a private company.

Landmark achievements of SpaceX in chronological order

include:[69][unreliable source?]

• The first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit

(Falcon 1 flight 4 on 28 September 2008)
• The first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to put a
commercial satellite in orbit (RazakSAT on Falcon 1 flight 5 on
14 July 2009)
• The first private company to successfully launch, orbit, and
recover a spacecraft (SpaceX Dragon on COTS Demo Flight 1
on 9 December 2010)
• The first private company to send a spacecraft to the
International Space Station (Dragon C2+ on 25 May 2012)
• The first private company to send a satellite into
geosynchronous orbit (SES-8 on Falcon 9 flight 7 on 3
December 2013)
• The first landing of an orbital rocket's first stage on land (Falcon
9 flight 20 on 22 December 2015)
• The first landing of an orbital rocket's first stage on an ocean
platform (Falcon 9 flight 23 on 8 April 2016)
• The first relaunch and landing of a used orbital rocket stage
(B1021 on Falcon 9 flight 32 on 30 March 2017)[70]
• The first controlled flyback and recovery of a payload fairing
(Falcon 9 flight 32 on 30 March 2017)[71]
• The first reflight of a commercial cargo spacecraft. (Dragon
C106 on CRS-11 mission on 3 June 2017)[72]
• The first private company to send an object into heliocentric
orbit (Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster on Falcon Heavy test flight
on 6 February 2018)
• The first private company to send a human-rated spacecraft to
space (Crew Dragon Demo-1, on Falcon 9 flight 69 on 2 March
2019)
• The first private company to autonomously dock a spacecraft to
the International Space Station (Crew Dragon Demo-1, on
Falcon 9 flight 69 on 2 March 2019)
• The first use of a full flow staged combustion cycle engine
(Raptor) in a free flying vehicle (Starhopper, multiple tests in
2019).
• The first reuse of payload fairing. On 11 November 2019 on
Starlink 1 Falcon 9 launch. Fairing was from the ArabSat-6A
mission in April earlier that year.