Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002, investing $100 million he made from the sale of PayPal.

Axar.az reports that the company nearly failed before receiving a $1.5 billion NASA contract in 2008.

Musk wants to colonize Mars and put a million people on the red planet by 2050

Elon Musk is the CEO of several companies, but SpaceX might just be the most exciting given its ambition of colonizing Mars with reusable rockets.

While Twitter, Tesla, and PayPal were all founded before he got involved, SpaceX was Musk's baby.

After receiving $175 million when eBay bought PayPal in 2002, he put $100 million into his new space exploration company.

By 2006, SpaceX had 160 employees and $278 million in funding from NASA as it worked to launch the Falcon 1 rocket. However, the fledgling company looked set to collapse after its first three SpaceX launches failed.

Then in late 2008, NASA effectively saved SpaceX by awarding it a $1.6 billion contract.

Fast forward 15 years, and the company has about 12,000 staff and has launched 240 Falcon rockets. That success has only come under Musk's highly demanding and intense leadership.