SpaceX, the space transportation company founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, has acquired fellow Californian company Swarm Technologies.

Swarm is a private company building a low Earth orbit satellite constellation for IoT communications. It was founded in 2016 by Sara Spangelo and Ben Longmier.

Swarm caused controversy in 2018. The previous year it applied for FCC permission for an experimental radio service licence for its initial picosatellites. The FCC rejected the application in December 2017 due to concerns on tracking because of the very small size of the satellites but they were launched from India the following month.

After the launch was reported, an authorised April 2018 launch of more satellites was immediately delayed when FCC permission was withdrawn. An FCC investigation found that not only had Swarm launched the four unauthorised satellites, it had also unlawfully transmitted signals between them and earth stations in Georgia.

The investigation also discovered that Swarm had performed various other equipment tests before the launch without required FCC authorisations, including between weather balloons and ground stations.

The settlement required Swarm to pay a fine and follow a strict compliance plan to prevent future violations. This included submitting additional details to the FCC at least 45 days before a planned launch for the next three years.

In February this year, Swarm announced that its commercial services were now live using 72 commercial satellites providing global low-cost data to users. Last month, it introduced an evaluation kit to make its satellite network more accessible.

SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk to revolutionise space transportation, with the goal of making life multiplanetary.

In December 2010, SpaceX became the first private company to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit. The company made history again in May 2012 when its Dragon spacecraft attached to the International Space Station, exchanged cargo payloads, and returned safely to Earth. Since then Dragon has delivered cargo to and from the space station multiple times, providing regular cargo resupply missions for Nasa.

This year, SpaceX had entered agreements with Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure to provide on-ground compute and networking services for Starlink, its internet satellite constellation that will use 4425 cross-linked communications satellites in 1100km orbits.

Financial details of the acquisition have not been revealed and SpaceX has not said yet how Swarm will fit into its operations.