Starlink, the satellite internet service by SpaceX, recently faced one of its biggest global outages, which left tens of thousands of users offline. Moreover, the disruption lasted about two hours and 30 minutes on Thursday, according to Michael Nicolls, Vice President of Starlink Engineering, who shared the details on X.
Currently, Starlink serves over six million users in nearly 140 countries and territories. However, the outage began around 3 p.m. on the U.S. East Coast, which is 19:00 GMT, based on Downdetector reports. Additionally, the crowdsourced outage tracker confirmed that as many as 61,000 users reported issues on the site.
Nicolls explained the reason in his post. He said, “The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network.” Furthermore, he added, “We apologise for the temporary disruption in our service; we are deeply committed to providing a highly reliable network, and will fully root cause this issue and ensure it does not occur again.”
Similarly, Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, responded to users on X. He wrote, “Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy the root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” This response assured users that the company is actively working on a fix.
Initially, experts speculated about possible causes. Some believed it might be a glitch, a failed software update, or even a cyberattack. Nevertheless, the company confirmed that the problem came from a failure in internal systems rather than an external threat.
For years, Starlink has been known for its strong reliability and rapid growth. Since 2020, SpaceX has launched more than 8,000 satellites, creating a vast low-Earth orbit network. Consequently, this network has become essential for militaries, transport industries, and people in rural areas without fibre internet access.
In addition, Starlink has recently focused on upgrading its system to deliver higher speeds and bandwidth. Therefore, the outage highlights how important the service is for users worldwide. Ultimately, the company assured that such an issue would not happen again and promised to investigate the root cause thoroughly.
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