SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink experienced a rare global outage on Thursday, affecting tens of thousands of users across its network of over six million subscribers in more than 140 countries.
According to Starlink VP Michael Nicolls, the 2.5-hour disruption stemmed from a failure of internal software services that manage the core network.
This disruption is significant given Starlink’s reputation for reliability and its critical role in providing internet access to remote areas, militaries, and industries.
Users began experiencing the outage at about 3pm on the United States’ East Coast (19:00 GMT) on Thursday, according to Downdetector, a crowdsourced outage tracker that said as many as 61,000 user reports to the site were made.
“The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network,” Nicolls explained in his post.
“We apologise for the temporary disruption in our service; we are deeply committed to providing a highly reliable network and will fully root cause this issue and ensure it does not occur again,” he said.
“Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk wrote on X, which he also owns.
SpaceX has launched more than 8,000 Starlink satellites since 2020, building a uniquely distributed network in low-Earth orbit that has attracted intense demand from militaries, transportation industries and consumers in rural areas with poor access to traditional, fibre-optic-based internet.
Following approximately three months of trial operations, Starlink formally started service last Friday, July 18, in Bangladesh.