Hobbling a Facebook Inc. initiative to spread internet access across Africa and marking the second loss of a spacecraft by Elon Musk’s venture in a little more than a year, a SpaceX rocket blew up on a launchpad in Florida.

As SpaceX held a dress rehearsal for Saturday’s planned launch of an Israeli communications satellite, the accident occurred Thursday at Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 40. But as fireballs scorched the structure, the Falcon 9 rocket and its payload were incinerated.

“It’s unfortunate that this happened. But the satellite for Facebook can be rebuilt pretty quickly. SpaceX knows how to make vehicles, put payloads up there. I think the recovery from this will be pretty rapid,” said Timothy Carone, an astrophysicist and teaching professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.

Including the first use of a reused rocket, Carone said. SpaceX is restoring a second pad for human space flight on the Florida cape and building another launch facility in Texas, the damage to SpaceX’s launchpad on Florida’s cape may prove critical in determining how quickly the commercial rocket venture can resume its full schedule of flights. It also uses California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base for some missions.

“The deal will either be canceled or the price will be reduced. 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,” said Meir Slater, head of research at Bank of Jerusalem.

Zuckerberg wrote in an Oct. 5 post that as Facebook and Eutelsat team up to connect people in remote parts of the world, the destroyed satellite was intended to beam Internet service to sub-Saharan Africa. The Facebook CEO has been meeting with entrepreneurs, government ministers and app developers on his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa.

“I’m deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite that would provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent. We remain committed to our mission of connecting everyone,” Zuckerberg said in a post Thursday.

The perils of space flight, which relies on controlled explosions to power payloads to orbit, was reminded by the blast. But many did not expect that Musk’s goal of one day colonizing Mars would be dimmed or his effort to shake up the staid launch industry would be dented.

“Today’s incident — while it was not a NASA launch — is a reminder that spaceflight is an incredible challenge, but our partners learn from each success and setback,” the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in a statement.

According to Twitter posts, a plume of thick black smoke and rattled windows in buildings miles away was left by the blast which occurred shortly after 9 a.m. local time before a test firing of the rocket’s engines.

Musk said in a tweet that the problem “originated around upper stage oxygen tank Cause still unknown. More soon.” and the failure occurred as fuel was loaded onto the rocket.

He was “deeply disappointed”, said Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, who is traveling in Africa.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation said in an e-mail that it would oversee the company’s investigation into the mishap. The agency licenses launches.

The Amos-6 satellite’s Facebook connection caused a web frenzy after the accident. But for SpaceX, which has scheduled more than 70 launches, representing $10 billion in contracts, it may not prove more than a short-term setback.

(Adapted from Bloomberg)

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