Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, mostly known as SpaceX, is a space transportation company based in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, who also founded PayPal and Tesla. The company develops rockets that can lift cargo into space, fly it to the International Space Station (ISS), and safely return cargo back to Earth. In December 2010, it became the first private corporation to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft. In May 2012 it was the first private company to send a cargo to the ISS, and it returned.