Israel Aerospace Industries has been instructed to pay Spacecom US$10 million for the late delivery of a satellite that was ultimately destroyed.
The IAI manufactured Amos 6 satellite was lost in a launchpad incident in September 2016 two days before it was due to take-off from Cape Canaveral from facilities operated by Elon Musk’s Space X.
A major client for its satellite capacity was Facebook, which was looking to use Amos 6 to connect parts of Africa to the Internet.
The announcement was made in a filing with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
The original $200 million agreement was made in 2012 with IAI as lead manufacturer and MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates the contractor for the Ku and multi-beam Ka pay-loads.
The precise nature of the delay is unclear, but in 2015 it was made public that the satellite’s launch had been delayed by a year.
In November 2016 it was revealed that IAI had paid Spacecom $196 million as an insurance payment on the lost satellite.
