Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by tech billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX, suffered a widespread outage on Thursday that disrupted customers around the globe.
The network has now mostly recovered, with the outage lasting approximately two and a half hours, Michael Nicolls, vice president of Starlink Engineering at SpaceX, said in a post that Starlink later reposted on the platform X.
“The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network,” Nicolls wrote.
“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 added.
While this is not the first time the system has gone offline, such outages remain relatively rare.
Starlink uses a network of thousands of satellites orbiting close to Earth, linking to small user terminals on the ground to deliver high-speed internet.
The service is used by various airlines to provide in-flight internet. It is also a critical communication tool for the Ukrainian military, as conventional telecommunications infrastructure has been largely destroyed during Russia’s war of aggression.
