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Facebook’s Internet satellite set to blast into orbit Sept. 3

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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, early Sunday, Aug. 14, 2016, with a Japanese communications satellite. (Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today via AP)
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, early Sunday, Aug. 14, 2016, with a Japanese communications satellite. (Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today via AP)Malcolm Denemark/Associated Press

Facebook’s first satellite, which would beam Internet service from space to unconnected residents of Africa, is scheduled to blast off Sept. 3 aboard a rocket launched by SpaceX, billionaire Elon Musk’s commercial space company.

French satellite operator Eutelsat confirmed the launch date Wednesday, tweeting that the satellite would deliver a “powerful new broadband platform for Eutelsat and #Facebook in Africa.”

Facebook representatives declined to comment, instead citing CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s October post announcing the Menlo Park company’s deal with Eutelsat and its plans to beam Internet access from space to “large parts of West, East and Southern Africa.”

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“We’re going to work with local partners across these regions to help communities begin accessing Internet services provided through satellite,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We’re going to keep working to connect the entire world — even if that means looking beyond our planet.”

Zuckerberg isn’t satisfied that 1.7 billion of the world’s 7.4 billion people are already monthly active users of his social network. In August 2013, Zuckerberg created Internet.org, a coalition of tech companies whose goal was to provide Internet connectivity to every man, woman and child on the planet.

The launch from Cape Canaveral is a step toward fulfilling that lofty objective, but it also makes sense for Facebook as a business, said Micah Walter-Range, director of research and analysis for the Space Foundation, a nonprofit space-industry educational group in Colorado.

“As long as Facebook can keep adding regular active users, then that looks good for its growth stats even if the users aren’t going to generate much revenue, at least in the short term,” Walter-Range wrote in an email. “So it makes sense to seek out new user bases as developed markets reach the point where all the people who are likely to use Facebook are already doing so.”

A lot is riding on the launch, which involves several companies.

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Facebook and Eutelstat are leasing Internet service capacity aboard the Amos-6, a satellite made by Israel’s Space-Communication Ltd. Known as Spacecom, that company separately announced Wednesday that it would be sold to the Beijing Xinwei Technology Group for $285 million.

The launch date was first reported by the industry news website Advanced Television, which also reported that the deal depends on a successful Amos-6 launch.

Spacecom said the satellite will need about 11 days from launch to reach its assigned geostationary orbit. If subsequent tests are successful, the satellite will replace an older model now in the same orbit. The new satellite will also provide Internet service to Europe and the Middle East, Spacecom said.

The launch is the next scheduled mission for the Falcon 9, the two-stage rocket from SpaceX, said Phil Larson, a spokesman for the private commercial space venture. Larson would not disclose other details about the launch.

Benny Evangelista is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: bevangelista@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChronicleBenny

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