Worldwide (Enmaeya News) — SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service faced one of its largest international outages Thursday after a software failure disrupted service for tens of thousands of users worldwide.
The outage began around 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT), affecting users primarily in the U.S. and Europe, according to Downdetector, a crowdsourced outage tracking website. The site recorded as many as 61,000 reports from users during the disruption.
Starlink, which serves over 6 million customers in about 140 countries, confirmed the outage on its X (formerly Twitter) account, stating it was actively working on a fix. Service mostly resumed about 2.5 hours later, Michael Nicolls, Starlink’s vice president of engineering, wrote on X.
“The outage was caused by failure of key internal software services that run the core network,” Nicolls said, apologizing for the interruption and promising to investigate the root cause.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also apologized, writing on X, “Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
The outage was unusual for Starlink, a service known for its reliability and rapid expansion. Experts speculated about possible causes, including a faulty software update or even a cyberattack.
Doug Madory, an internet analysis expert at Kentik, said the global scope of the outage was rare. “This is likely the longest outage ever for Starlink since it became a major service provider,” Madory said.
SpaceX has been updating its network to meet rising demand for faster speeds and greater bandwidth. The company is also expanding the Starlink constellation with larger, more powerful satellites and recently partnered with T-Mobile to introduce direct-to-cell text messaging services. This feature aims to allow mobile users in rural areas to send emergency texts via the satellite network.
Since 2020, SpaceX has launched more than 8,000 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit. The network attracts customers from military, transportation, and rural consumer sectors who lack access to traditional internet infrastructure.
Gregory Falco, director of a space and cybersecurity lab at Cornell University, said the outage might resemble the software glitch that disrupted CrowdStrike cybersecurity software last year, which caused flight cancellations and affected millions of Microsoft Windows devices worldwide.
It remains unclear if other SpaceX satellite services, including Starshield—the company’s military satellite division with Pentagon contracts—were impacted by Thursday’s outage.
