Tens of thousands of people worldwide were unable to access the internet on Thursday due to a software malfunction, causing one of SpaceX’s biggest international outages. Users mostly in the US and Europe were impacted by the outage, which started at approximately 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT). More than 61,000 user reports were submitted during the incident, according to Downdetector, a website that monitors service interruptions.
Also around 12:00 PT, Downdetector.com discovered a rise in complaints, with 55,000 reports from all around the world. According to the satellite service, a solution is being implemented “actively.”
Starlink later confirmed the disruption, which lasted for about two and a half hours, and attributed it to a “failure of key internal software services that operate the core network.” On social media site X, Michael Nicolls, the vice president of Starlink Engineering for the corporation, expressed regret and reassured users that an inquiry into the underlying reason was being conducted and that a solution had been put in place.
Michael Nicolls, VP of Starlink Engineering at SpaceX, also went ahead to provide the second update and report, stating: “Starlink has now mostly recovered from the network outage, which lasted approximately 2.5 hours.”
He could not provide further details, but attributed the disruption to a “failure of key internal software services that operate the core network.” According to Nicolls, SpaceX intends to “fully root cause” the problem in order to avoid a recurrence.
As for the “T-Satellite service,” T-Mobile informed PCMag that it is “operating normally with no network impacts or outages.”
Some Starlink users have begun to regain access since after the first update about the satellite internet. Brian Westover of PCMag informed the writer that he was without satellite internet in rural Idaho for almost two hours until it was restored.
According to Westover, diagnosing the problem was initially challenging. Even though there are no trees near his house, SpaceX’s Starlink app was alerting him that his Starlink dish had become blocked. “It is a real pain, though, because there’s no way to really tell if the problem is your own hardware, and can be fixed with troubleshooting, or if it’s on Starlink’s end,” according to him.
The two-plus-hour interruption, according to Doug Madory, director of Internet Analysis at Kentik, marks “this incident Starlink’s longest outage since becoming a major service provider.”
Meanwhile, Starlink’s official website still states that it is currently experiencing an outage. According to other users, their Starlink service is still unavailable.
Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, expressed regret for the outage on X. “SpaceX will remedy the root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” he wrote on Twitter. To make sure it doesn’t happen again, SpaceX will address the underlying cause.
However analysts and users showed concerns about the rare outage, with some wondering if it was caused by a cyberattack or a poorly executed software update. The extent and duration of the outage were described as “unusual” by Doug Madory, an internet infrastructure specialist at Kentik, who also stated that it was probably the longest service interruption Starlink had experienced since growing into a significant provider.
Customers worldwide are unable to access satellite internet due to what looks to be a significant outage in SpaceX’s Starlink.
Access to the satellite internet system, which serves more than 6 million people globally, has been lost, according to users on Facebook, Reddit, and X.com. Service interruptions have been reported by users in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.
On X, the company wrote, “Starlink is currently in a network outage and we are actively implementing a solution,” “Thank you for your patience; as this problem is fixed, we’ll let you know.
On Downdetector.com, outage complaints are on the rise; at approximately noon PT, there were 55,000 reports. Starlink.com appears to have been taken down as well. A notice stating that “Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage” was visible as recently as thirty minutes ago. Our team is looking into it, but neither Starlink.com nor its Availability Map are loading at the moment.
Jianping Pan, a professor of computer science who studies satellite internet systems at the University of Victoria in Canada, claims he is having trouble connecting. He informed the writer and the team that “we have access to about 20 Starlink dishes around the world—all down at the moment.”
A request for comment has not yet received a response from SpaceX. This story will be updated as it develops.
Starlink has more than 2 million subscribers in the United States. T-Mobile’s cellular Starlink service, which offers message access in cellular dead zones, was introduced yesterday.
A vital component of SpaceX’s commercial portfolio, Starlink currently serves more than six million consumers in almost 140 countries and territories. More than 8,000 of its low-Earth orbit satellites have been launched since 2020, meeting the demands of both consumers in remote locations and governments and military forces looking for dependable internet in difficult-to-reach places.
By collaborating with T-Mobile to offer direct-to-cell text messaging in rural regions, SpaceX has been increasing the Starlink network’s capacity in recent months. In order to satisfy growing bandwidth demands, the business is also installing more recent and potent satellites.
According to Gregory Falco, a cybersecurity specialist at Cornell University, the incident was similar to the CrowdStrike software problem that affected millions of Microsoft Windows PCs worldwide in 2024. “I would guess that this is either a cyberattack or a bad software update, not totally different from the CrowdStrike mess with Windows last year,” he said.
Whether the outage affected SpaceX’s military satellite division, Starshield, which depends on the Starlink infrastructure and has significant contracts with US defense and intelligence agencies, is still unknown.
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