Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service experienced a significant global outage on Thursday, leaving tens of thousands of users offline.
Users across the United States and Europe began reporting issues around 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT), according to Downdetector, a platform that tracks service disruptions. The outage affected as many as 61,000 users who reported problems accessing the internet.
Starlink, which boasts over 6 million users in approximately 140 countries and territories, acknowledged the disruption on its social media account. “We are actively implementing a solution,” the company announced.
After about two and a half hours, services began to resume. Michael Nicolls, Vice President of Starlink Engineering, explained, “The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network.” He apologized for the inconvenience and assured users that the team is working to prevent future incidents.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, also addressed the issue, saying, “Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
Experts noted that such a widespread interruption is unusual for Starlink. Doug Madory, an analyst at internet monitoring firm Kentik, highlighted, “This is likely the longest outage ever for Starlink since it became a major service provider.”
Starlink has launched more than 8,000 satellites into low-Earth orbit since 2020, creating a network that provides internet access to remote areas and has become integral for various sectors, including military and transportation.
The outage sparked speculation about the cause, with theories ranging from a software glitch to potential cyberattacks. However, the official statements point to internal software failures as the root cause.
As services return to normal, Starlink users worldwide remain hopeful that the company’s proactive measures will enhance the network’s reliability moving forward.
