SpaceX’s satellite internet service, Starlink, experienced one of its worst global outages yesterday, leaving users around the world offline for over two hours.
The rare disruption, which hit users in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and parts of Africa, temporarily severed internet connectivity for military, commercial, and everyday users.
The outage began around 3:15 PM ET, with online trackers such as Downdetector logging over 60,000 incident reports within the first hour.
NetBlocks, a global internet watchdog, noted that Starlink traffic dropped to just 16% of typical levels, confirming the widespread impact of the failure.
According to SpaceX, the outage was caused by a software malfunction within the company’s core network infrastructure.
While the exact technical failure is still under investigation, early reports suggest the problem may have stemmed from a faulty software update or potential system misconfiguration.
Some cybersecurity analysts even raised the possibility of a targeted cyberattack, although no official confirmation has been provided.
The disruption also came at a delicate time, just after the announcement of T-Mobile’s “T-Satellite” service, which is powered by Starlink. It remains unclear if the integration contributed to the downtime.
Elon Musk Responds
Shortly after the outage began, Elon Musk took to X (formerly Twitter), writing:
“Service will be restored shortly. Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy the root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
By 1:23 AM local time, Starlink VP Michael Nicolls confirmed that most services had been restored. He assured users that the team was “working hard to identify and fix the root issue” to prevent similar failures in the future.
Who Was Affected?
The outage had serious implications beyond just consumer internet use. In Ukraine, where Starlink is widely used by the military, frontline forces reported losing communication for over 150 minutes, raising concerns about the reliability of satellite-based communication in critical operations.
Other affected sectors included:
- Remote workers
- Businesses in rural areas
- Emergency services relying on Starlink
- Direct-to-cell satellite test users
Starlink currently serves over 6 million users in 140+ countries, making it a critical infrastructure for many regions lacking traditional internet access.
As SpaceX ramps up direct-to-device satellite internet globally, this Starlink outage proved the vulnerabilities of relying on a single satellite provider.
Following the outage, SpaceX has committed to:
- Publishing a full post-mortem report on the outage
- Improving software update safeguards
- Strengthening redundancy and monitoring systems
- Ensuring military and emergency users have alternative backups
