Thursday morning’s test was part of a standard preparation for the anticipated Saturday launch of a satellite, the Amos 6, into orbit.
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In a statement the social network’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was “deeply disappointed”.
As well as being the rocket company’s CEO, he also heads up the Tesla electric vehicle company. There was no immediate word on any injuries; the launch pad usually is cleared before a test firing of a SpaceX Falcon rocket.
SpaceX, a California-based company owned by billionaire Elon Musk, released a statement saying the cause of the fiery incident was due to an “anomaly” on the launch pad itself. It didn’t provide any details. The satellite, Amos-6, was built by Israeli satellite firm Spacecom.
SpaceX had recovered from a June 2015 launch accident that destroyed a load of cargo headed for the International Space Station.
The explosion is a major blow for SpaceX and for Nasa, which relies on the company to keep the space station equipped with food, science experiments and other supplies.
An explosion rocked the launch site for Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Thursday and black smoke could be seen rising into the air from the facility, multiple United States media reports said. But a stock market filing says Space Communication’s pending $US285 million sale to Beijing Xinwei Group was contingent on a successful launch.
Two Nasa astronauts were conducting a spacewalk 250 miles up, outside the International Space Station, when the explosion occurred. SpaceX is one of two companies shipping supplies to the space station for NASA.
NASA is also reassuring that the launch of the Osiris-Rex – scheduled to launch on September 8 – remains in place after initial assessments show the SpaceX explosion, which was 1.1 miles away, did not do any damage.
SpaceX has more than 70 launches on its manifest, worth more than $10 billion.
When a SpaceX rocket exploded on Thursday, one casualty was Facebook.
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Kennedy Space Center spokeswoman Stephanie Martin noted to CNN that “it is too early to know what impacts there would be” regarding future manned flights, adding, “it would be inappropriate to speculate at this time”.
