Starlink internet service outage caused by internal software malfunction
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet suffered a significant disruption, affecting tens of thousands of users worldwide, a rare event prompting apologies from top executives, including its founder, Elon Musk.
Starlink, serving over six million users in around 140 countries, faced a disruption lasting approximately 2.5 hours on Thursday, as stated by Michael Nicolls, Starlink’s Vice President of Starlink Engineering, in a post on X.
The outage raised questions among experts regarding the cause of the disruption, speculating it could have been due to a glitch, a faulty software update, or possibly a cyberattack.
Users first reported issues around 3 PM Eastern Standard Time (19:00 GMT) on Thursday, with Downdetector, an outage tracking platform, recording up to 61,000 reports from affected users.
“The service disruption was due to a failure in our key internal software services that manage the core network,” Nicolls explained in the post.
“We apologize for the temporary disruption of our service; we are committed to delivering a highly reliable network and will thoroughly investigate this issue to prevent it from happening again,” Nicolls stated.
Musk also issued an apology, stating, “Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will take action to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” from the CEO and founder of SpaceX on X, a platform he also owns.
Since 2020, SpaceX has launched over 8,000 Starlink satellites, developing a unique, distributed network in low-Earth orbit that has attracted significant interest from militaries, transportation sectors, and consumers in rural areas with inadequate access to conventional fiber-optic internet.
Starlink has recently focused on upgrading its network to meet the growing demands for higher speeds and bandwidth.
