SpaceX launch from Cape Canaveral to help Facebook expand Internet

A communications satellite that SpaceX is slated to launch from Cape Canaveral will help Facebook expand Internet access in sub-Saharan Africa.

Under a partnership announced Monday, Facebook and European satellite operator Eutelsat will buy all of the broadband capacity on the AMOS-6 satellite owned by Israeli company Spacecom.

The mission has no confirmed launch date, with SpaceX still recovering from a Falcon 9 launch failure in June, but the partners expect the satellite to begin service in the second half of 2016, according to a press release.

Facebook two years ago helped launch Internet.org, an initiative with multiple corporate sponsors that seeks to connect two-thirds of the global population lacking Internet access.

“Facebook’s mission is to connect the world and we believe that satellites will play an important role in addressing the significant barriers that exist in connecting the people of Africa,” said Chris Daniels, vice president of Internet.org. “We are looking forward to partnering with Eutelsat on this project and investigating new ways to use satellites to connect people in the most remote areas of the world more efficiently.”

Facebook says it is studying technologies including solar-powered drones, satellites and lasers to deliver broadband connections from the sky.

The social networking site with about 1.5 billion active monthly users is not the only Internet company interested in expanding access around the world, and thus its base of potential users and advertisers.

Google earlier this year joined Fidelity making a $1 billion investment in SpaceX, which has begun studying a potential network of roughly 4,000 small satellites that would expand Internet access. Google also is an investor in O3b Networks, a satellite company created to provide Internet connectivity to the world's "other 3 billion."

Virgin Group and Qualcomm are investors in OneWeb, which plans to launch more than 600 small satellites and has contracted with Virgin Galactic to launch nearly 40 of them with its LauncherOne system.

SpaceX announced the contract to launch the AMOS-6 satellite in January 2013, then saying that the launch was expected in 2015 from Cape Canaveral.

The company hopes to return its Falcon 9 rocket to flight before the end of the year, likely with the launch of another communications satellite from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.