Falconprivately developed family of two launch vehicles, Falcon 1 and Falcon 9, built by the U.S. corporation SpaceX with funding from South African-born American entrepreneur Elon Musk.

Falcon 1 was designed to place a 420-kg (925-pound) payload into orbit at lower cost than other launch vehicles, in part by using a recoverable first stage. Falcon 9 was designed to compete with the Delta family of launchers in that it was planned to lift payloads of 4,640 kg (10,200 pounds) to geostationary orbit. One of the payloads it will launch to low Earth orbit is Dragon, a spacecraft designed to carry crew and cargo to the International Space Station. A heavy-lift version of the Falcon 9 was designed to carry payloads of 15,000 kg (33,000 pounds) to geostationary orbit.

The first test flight of the Falcon 1 took place on March 24, 2006, on Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean but failed just 25 seconds after liftoff. Corrosion between a nut and a fuel line had allowed the line to leak, which caused an engine fire. Later in 2006, SpaceX won a $278 million contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for three demonstration launches of the company’s Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9launcher in 2009–10. Two subsequent tests of Falcon 1 ended in failure, but on Sept. 28, 2008, Falcon 1 successfully entered Earth orbit. The first launch test flight of Falcon 9 was scheduled for early 2010June 4, 2010, from Cape Canaveral, Florida.