The recent explosion
suffered by a SpaceX rocket which resulted in the lost of the rocket and a satellite
said to belong to the social site giant, Facebook is a setback to Africa.
Although
the duo of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, both sponsors of the project will not
forget in a hurry the lost of the rocket and the $95 million satellite. Read the
report below.
Facebook's effort to bring
internet access to sub-Saharan Africa suffered a serious setback Thursday
morning when a SpaceX rocket exploded during a test.
The explosion simultaneously
affected the plans of two of the most famous names in tech — Elon Musk,
who owns SpaceX, and Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The rocket and the satellite
were both lost due to "an anomaly," SpaceX confirmed, though the root
cause of the explosion is not yet known.
Facebook had leased capacity
on the Amos-6 communications satellite that was aboard the Falcon 9 rocket as
it performed a static test fire on a Cape Canaveral launchpad.
Facebook had planned for the
satellite to provide internet coverage to parts of sub-Saharan Africa through
its Internet.org initiative. This specific effort with Amos-6 was in
partnership with Paris-based satellite fleet operator Eutelsat.
Bad day for us at @SpaceX Thank you to everyone for the kind messages of concern. https://t.co/c4zBWaBecQ
The companies split the $95
million cost of the now-destroyed satellite that would be paid out over the
next 5 years, according to Space
News.
“We are not a satellite
company,” Max Kamenetsky, director of connectivity deployments for
Internet.org, said in March, according to Space News. “For us, the
satellite was an investment where we saw a specific opportunity to deliver
services to parts of sub-Saharan Africa. It’s a first step for us to understand
this market, which has not been served very well by operators.”
The project is a part of
Facebook's long-term goal to "connect the world," not only with a
social network but as an internet provider.
In a Facebook post on Thursday, Zuckerberg said he was
"... 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."
"Fortunately, we have
developed other technologies like Aquila that will connect people as
well," Zuckerberg wrote. "We remain committed to our mission of
connecting everyone, and we will keep working until everyone has the
opportunities this satellite would have provided."
The satellite would have
been integrated into Facebook's Express Wi-Fi program, which allows business
owners to sell Wi-Fi via local internet service providers, with Facebook
providing the software.
Facebook's Express Wi-Fi is
currently available in India and Africa.
During a visit to Lagos,
Nigeria, this week, Zuckerberg touted the project while meeting with
entrepreneurs, such as Rosemary Njoku, who has 3,000 Express Wi-Fi
customers.
"This week, we're
launching a satellite into space to enable more entrepreneurs across Africa to
sell Express Wi-Fi and more people to access reliable internet," Zuckerberg wrote in a
Facebook post on August 30. "That means more connectivity and more
opportunity for entrepreneurs like Rosemary everywhere."
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