NASA says SpaceX was conducting a test firing of its pioneering unmanned rocket when disaster struck.

A series of explosions sent smoke and flames shooting through the sky and shook buildings miles away.

The blast took with it Facebook's first satellite costing the company a whopping £150 million.

The social media giant's devastated founder Mark Zuckerberg said: "As I'm here in Africa, I'm deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX's launch failure destroyed our satellite that would have provided so much connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent."

SpaceX - founded by PayPal and Tesla tycoon Elon Musk - confirmed there was an anomaly on the launch pad which resulted in the loss of the rocket and its payload.

The Israeli made Amos-6 communications satellite was, according to Tech Crunch, carrying technology to allow Zuckerberg's firm to spot beam wireless internet directly to smartphones in sub-Saharan Africa.