Elon Musk-run SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service faced a major outage affecting thousands of users on a global scale a day ago. Starlink consumers from several countries found and reported a loss of connection through their satellite dishes. Users who reported the outage were mostly from the US, Canada, Australia, Europe, and New Zealand. However, the company managed to fix the problems just a few hours after they occurred, and is currently looking for the exact cause .
Starlink says software failure was the root of the global outage
Michael Nicolls, SpaceX’s VP of Starlink Engineering, said that a failure in key internal software services caused the global outage. These services run the core functions of the company’s satellite network. He also confirmed that the company’s services have now mostly recovered from the network outage, which lasted approximately 2.5 hours.
“The network issue has been resolved, and Starlink service has been restored. We understand how important connectivity is and apologize for the disruption,” Starlink also posted on X. The company’s engineers are now looking for the main cause of its biggest international service outages the day before.
What happened with Starlink’s satellite internet service?
According to Downdetector, a site that logs problems, there were over 61,000 user reports of a Starlink outage on its platform. Furthermore, posts by users on platforms like Reddit, Facebook, and X revealed that there were thousands who were facing the Starlink outage globally.
Even Elon Musk apologized for the outage on X and promised to address the issue permanently. The outage was a rare hiccup for Elon Musk-run SpaceX’s most commercially sensitive business.
It’s worth mentioning that Starlink services were down merely hours after T-Mobile launched its much-awaited T-Satellite solution . It allows text messaging, emergency alerts, and location sharing functionalities in areas with no cell coverage .
It appears that the Starlink outage didn’t affect T-Satellite’s launch. T-Mobile told PCMag that the “T-Satellite service is operating normally with no network impacts or outages,” after Starlink went down for a couple of hours.
