The sudden explosion a SpaceX rocket Thursday in Cape Canaveral would have been bad news for C.E.O. Elon Musk regardless.
But this particular Falcon 9 rocket which blew up due to an “anomaly” with the launch pad, according to the company was carrying some particularly precious cargo: a $200 million satellite, the AMOS-6, which was the result of a collaboration between Facebook and satellite-maker Eutelsat, which Facebook C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg hoped to use to bring Internet access to underserved parts of the world.
A key component of Zuckerberg’s Internet.org initiative, the AMOS-6 satellite was intended to beam broadband Internet to sub-Saharan Africa, where the young billionaire was traveling this week when Musk’s rocket exploded.
“As I’m here in Africa, I’m deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent,” Zuckerberg said in a statement posted to Facebook on Thursday.
The explosion and the subsequent loss of the AMOS-6 is a major setback for the social-media company, which is trying to connect billions of people in developing nations to the Internet. To date, 4.2 billion people in the world aren’t online. (That’s 4.2 billion people without a Facebook account, if you’re keeping track at home.)
When Facebook formed Internet.org in 2013, the company was said to have already spent $1 billion on wireless infrastructure, including satellite technology and drones.
Earlier this summer, the company had tested a solar-powered Internet drone called Aquila, which combined with the AMOS-6 could be much more effective at connecting remote areas to the Internet than targeted cell towers.
“To connect people living in remote regions, traditional connectivity infrastructure is often difficult and inefficient, so we need to invent new technologies,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post last October
announcing the satellite initiative. “We’re going to work with local partners across these regions to help communities begin accessing internet services provided through satellite.”
Facebook isn’t the only tech giant trying to perfect new long-distance, wireless Internet technology. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has launched and tested balloons that fly 60,000 feet in the air and beam Internet connectivity to the areas below.
The plan, called Project Loon, is still being tested in areas of the world including Brazil and New Zealand. Zuckerberg, meanwhile, might have to wait years if he seeks to build another AMOS-6: “It’s a big, complicated satellite,”
Tim Farrar , the president of telecom consulting firm TMF Associates told The Wall Street Journal. “It takes hundreds of people at least two years to build.”
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