SpaceX’s Starlink suffered a major outage on Thursday, affecting tens of thousands of users globally. The Starlink outage was caused by an internal software failure, according to the company. Users across the U.S. and Europe reported connectivity issues around 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT), as per Downdetector, which recorded up to 61,000 user reports.

Starlink, which serves over 6 million users in nearly 140 countries and territories, acknowledged the problem on its official X account. The company announced that it was actively working on a solution. Service was mostly restored after 2.5 hours, Michael Nicolls, vice president of Starlink Engineering, revealed on X.

“The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network,” Nicolls wrote, apologizing for the disruption and confirming efforts to find the root cause. Elon Musk also apologized, stating, “Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Experts commented on the incident, noting the unusual scale of the Starlink outage. Doug Madory, an analyst at internet monitoring firm Kentik, reported that the outage was global. “This is likely the longest outage ever for Starlink, at least while it became a major service provider,” he said.

The outage has sparked discussions about possible causes, including a software glitch, a failed update, or even a cyberattack. Gregory Falco, director of a space and cybersecurity lab at Cornell University, speculated, “I’d guess this is a bad software update, not entirely dissimilar to the CrowdStrike issue with Windows last year, or a cyberattack.”

Key details include:

• SpaceX launched more than 8,000 Starlink satellites since 2020 to build its low-Earth orbit network.
• The company is partnering with T-Mobile to provide direct-to-cell text messaging services in rural areas.

Starlink’s growing user base has pushed SpaceX to focus on enhancing network speed and bandwidth. The company’s Starshield unit, which handles military satellite services, holds significant contracts with the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies. It remains unclear if these services were affected by the Starlink outage.

The incident is being compared to a 2024 CrowdStrike cybersecurity software update that caused worldwide flight cancellations and disrupted 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices.

Source: Reuters

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