SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink experienced one of its largest international disruptions on Thursday, when an internal software failure knocked tens of thousands of users offline. The outage began around 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT) and affected users primarily in the U.S. and Europe, with crowdsourced reports peaking at approximately 61,000 incidents.
Starlink, which serves over 6 million subscribers across nearly 140 countries, acknowledged the disruption on its X account and assured customers that the team “is actively implementing a solution.” After about 2.5 hours, service largely resumed, according to Michael Nicolls, Starlink’s Vice President of Engineering, who apologized and pledged to identify the root cause.
Elon Musk also issued an apology on X, stating: “Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” Industry experts speculated whether the failure stemmed from a flawed software update, a rare glitch, or even a cyberattack. Gregory Falco of Cornell University likened the incident to last year’s global outage caused by a compromised cybersecurity update, while Doug Madory of Kentik noted that a disruption of this scale is unprecedented for a service of Starlink’s resilience.
As Starlink continues its rapid expansion—launching over 8,000 satellites since 2020 and partnering with T-Mobile to provide direct-to-cell emergency text messaging—SpaceX has been upgrading its network to meet growing demands for higher speeds and bandwidth. The recent outage underscores the challenges of operating a vast low-Earth-orbit constellation that serves not only remote consumers but also military and industrial clients worldwide.
