It's a sad week for SpaceX and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. Two days before launch, the 602-ton Falcon 9 rocket was destroyed by several large explosion as it was being fueled. The explosion happened on Thursday at 9:07am at the Cape Canaveral Air Station. An air force facility that SpaceX has leased multiple times for other launches.

The fuel tanks contained liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene propellant. The blast lasted around 4-min and could be heard for miles away. The fire caused plums of smoke so large they could be seen on radar.

Although not all the information is in, SpaceX reported that they think there was an anomaly on the pad that caused the upper stage oxygen tank to explode during a test fire. The explosion started a chain reaction that ended up engulfing Falcon 9 in flames.

Scheduled to launch Saturday, the Falcon 9 was carrying the AMOS-6. An $85 million dollar Israeli communication satellite. The social media company Facebook and French-based satellite provider Eutelsat S.A. agreed to lease the satellite for $95 million over a period of five years. AMOS- 6’s mission was to bring internet access to remote villages in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg made several posts expressing his disappointment over the lost.

"I'm deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX's launch failure destroyed our satellite" -Mark Zuckerberg

"It would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent." -Mark Zuckerberg

Zuckerberg also mentioned other technologies that will help connect people. "We will keep working until everyone has the opportunities this satellite would have provided" .

Fortunately the launch pad was clear and no one got hurt, but it’s unclear what the long term effects this accident will have on SpaceX. The company was founded in 2002 and has been a major player in the space community. SpaceX hopes that by 2017 they will be given a flight readiness certification from NASA so that they can start manned flights, but this incident could set them back. SpaceX's largest competitor, United Launch Alliance has a perfect launch record, while the Falcon 9s failure brings SpaceX down to 93%.

Kennedy Space Center spokeswoman Stephanie Martin said "It is too early to know what impacts there would be (with the manned flights) and it would be inappropriate to speculate at this time,"