The blast, which occurred shortly after 9 a.m. local time during a test firing of the rocket’s engines, left a plume of thick black smoke and rattled windows in buildings miles away from the launch pad, according to Twitter posts. It was a reminder of the danger of space flight, which relies on controlled explosions to power payloads to orbit.

Israeli satellite operator Space Communication Ltd. tumbled 8.9 percent to 39.08 shekels at the close in Tel Aviv, the biggest drop in nine months. The successful launch of the Amos 6 satellite was a condition of the company’s $285 million sale to a Beijing Xinwei Group unit, according to an Aug. 24 filing to the Tel Aviv stock market.

Satellites are insured

“The deal will either be canceled or the price will be reduced,” said Meir Slater, head of research at Bank of Jerusalem. “The majority of the company’s value is tied to Amos 2 and Amos 6. These satellites are insured, so the bondholders are covered, but in terms of the shareholders, they lose out because any damage done to the satellites means a loss of customers such as Facebook.”

The destroyed satellite was intended to beam internet service to sub-Saharan Africa as part of a collaboration between Facebook and Eutelsat to connect people in remote parts of the world, Zuckerberg wrote in an Oct. 5 post. The AMOS-6 was to cover large parts of West, East and Southern Africa, Zuckerberg said.

“We’re going to work with local partners across these regions to help communities begin accessing internet services provided through satellite,” he said in the post.

The executive is currently on his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa, where he has been meeting with entrepreneurs and app developers in Nigeria. Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shaken up the space industry

Saturday’s launch was to be the ninth of the year for Space Exploration Technologies Corp., which had settled into a steady tempo of flights following a June 2015 accident that grounded its rockets for six months. That failure was linked to a two-foot-long, inch-thick strut that snapped in a liquid oxygen tank.

Musk’s Hawthorne, California-based company has shaken up the space industry by introducing cost competition and successfully landing rocket boosters to be reused. It has won contracts with NASA to ferry cargo and crew to the International Space Station and agreements with commercial satellite companies to send satellites into orbit.

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