Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service experienced a global outage on Thursday, rendering tens of thousands of users offline. This rare worldwide disruption was attributed to a failure in the system’s internal software.
The service, typically known for its smooth operation, faced a 2.5-hour blackout before engineers successfully restored functionality. Starlink issued an apology and pledged to implement measures to prevent similar incidents in the future.
According to Downdetector, a crowd-sourced outage tracker, users in the US and Europe began experiencing the disruption around 3 PM EDT (1900 GMT), with as many as 61,000 user reports submitted to the site. Starlink, which boasts over 6 million users across approximately 140 countries and territories, later acknowledged the outage on its X account, stating, “we are actively implementing a solution.”
Michael Nicolls, Starlink’s Vice President of Engineering, confirmed on X that Starlink service largely resumed after 2.5 hours. “The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network,” Nicolls explained, apologizing for the disruption and vowing to identify its root cause. Musk also offered his apologies, stating on X, “Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
This outage represents a rare hiccup for SpaceX’s most commercially sensitive business, leading experts to speculate whether the service—renowned for its resilience and rapid expansion—was affected by a glitch, a botched software update, or even a cyberattack. Doug Madory, an expert at the internet analysis firm Kentik, characterized the outage as global and emphasized the unusual nature of such a sweeping interruption. “This is likely the longest outage ever for Starlink, at least while it became a major service provider,” Madory commented.
As Starlink has gained more users, SpaceX has, in recent months, heavily focused on upgrading its network to accommodate the demand for higher speed and bandwidth. In partnership with T-Mobile, the company is also expanding its satellite constellation with larger, more powerful satellites to offer direct-to-cell text messaging services. This initiative will enable mobile phone users in rural areas to send emergency texts through the network. Since 2020, SpaceX has launched over 8,000 Starlink satellites, creating a uniquely distributed network in low-Earth orbit that has garnered strong demand from militaries, transportation industries, and consumers in rural areas with limited access to traditional, fiber-based internet.
Gregory Falco, director of a space and cybersecurity laboratory at Cornell University, speculated, “I’d speculate this is a bad software update, not entirely dissimilar to the CrowdStrike mess with Windows last year, or a cyberattack.” An update to CrowdStrike’s widely used cybersecurity software led to worldwide flight cancellations and impacted industries globally in July of the previous year, disrupting internet services and affecting 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices. It remains unclear whether Thursday’s outage also impacted SpaceX’s other satellite-based services that rely on the Starlink network. Starshield, the company’s military satellite unit, holds billions of dollars’ worth of contracts with the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies.
