SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service experienced a significant global outage Thursday, affecting tens of thousands of users and prompting apologies from company executives including Elon Musk.
The disruption lasted approximately two hours and 30 minutes, according to Michael Nicolls, Starlink’s vice president of engineering, who posted details on X. Starlink operates across roughly 140 countries and territories with more than six million users.
Users first reported problems around 3pm Eastern Time Thursday, with Downdetector recording as many as 61,000 user complaints during the outage period. The incident represented an unusual disruption for SpaceX’s most commercially important business unit.
“The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network,” Nicolls explained in his social media post. He added that the company apologized “for the temporary disruption in our service” and committed to identifying the root cause to prevent future occurrences.
Musk also issued an apology on X, stating “Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
The service disruption raised questions among industry experts about whether the outage resulted from a technical glitch, problematic software update, or potentially a cyberattack. Such widespread disruptions are rare for Starlink, which has built a reputation for reliability and rapid expansion.
Since launching its first satellites in 2020, SpaceX has deployed more than 8,000 Starlink satellites, creating a distributed network in low-Earth orbit. The service has attracted significant demand from military organizations, transportation companies, and consumers in rural areas lacking access to traditional fiber-optic internet infrastructure.
Starlink has recently focused on network upgrades to support increased speed and bandwidth requirements. The company’s satellite constellation represents a uniquely resilient internet infrastructure due to its distributed nature across multiple orbital positions.
The outage highlighted the growing dependence on satellite-based internet services, particularly in remote regions where traditional connectivity options remain limited or unavailable.
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