While internet-by-satellite is usually a costly option in the developing world, Zuckerberg said he planned to make accessing the network affordable.”It’s not much good having the infrastructure if people can not afford to use it”, he said.Facebook had 84 million users in Sub-Saharan Africa at the end of July, compared with 1.7 billion worldwide.
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The explosion is the second major setback for the Israeli satellite services company, after all contact was lost previous year with the Amos-5 spacecraft.
There’s been a major explosion during a test firing of the Space X rocket that was due to launch the Amos 6 satellite this weekend. “Fortunately, we have developed other technologies like Aquila that will connect people as well”, exclaimed Zuckerberg.
“We remain committed to our mission of connecting everyone, and we will keep working until everyone has the opportunities this satellite would have provided”, said Zuckerberg, who is now in Africa.
The U.S. Air Force said on its Twitter account that an explosion occurred on the pad at Cape Canaveral.
It was set to be launched into orbit on Saturday.
The satellite will “beam down connectivity”, the CEO said in a presentation on Wednesday in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital.
“Space X can confirm that in preparation for today’s static fire there was an anomaly on the pad resulting in the loss of the vehicle and its payload”.
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This was the ninth SpaceX launch of 2016, and was one in a string of launches planned for the fall, including an expected test of the company’s new Falcon Heavy rocket, expected to launch late this year. It was valued at between $95-200 million. SpaceX is looking to prove it can safely reuse rockets to increase the frequency of launches while lowering their cost. The last time a SpaceX rocket malfunctioned during launch was in June of 2015, when an unmanned Falcon-9 rocket bound for the International Space Station exploded shortly after taking off.
