Key Points
- An internal software failure caused a major global Starlink outage on Thursday.
- The disruption affected tens of thousands of users in the U.S. and Europe for approximately 2.5 hours.
- Starlink and CEO Elon Musk both apologized and promised to fix the root cause of the problem.
- Experts called the outage “unusual” and possibly the longest in Starlink’s history as a major service provider.
SpaceX’s Starlink suffered one of its biggest international outages on Thursday, knocking tens of thousands of users offline. The company stated that an internal software failure was responsible for the rare disruption to Elon Musk’s powerful satellite internet system.
Users in the U.S. and Europe began reporting outages in the afternoon, with as many as 61,000 reports logged on the tracking site Downdetector. Service was mostly restored after about 2.5 hours.
Both the company and CEO Elon Musk apologized for the disruption. Michael Nicolls, Starlink’s Vice President of Engineering, confirmed the outage was due to a “failure of key internal software services that operate the core network.” Musk promised on X that SpaceX would find the root cause to “ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
The outage was a rare stumble for Starlink, which has over 6 million users and is known for its reliability. Internet analysis firm Kentik called the outage “global” and “unusual,” possibly the longest the service has ever experienced. Experts speculated that the problem could have been a botched software update, similar to the major CrowdStrike outage last year, or even a cyberattack.
The disruption raised questions about the security of SpaceX’s other satellite services that rely on the Starlink network. This includes Starshield, the company’s military satellite unit, which holds billions of dollars in contracts with the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.
