SpaceX chief Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service experienced an hours-long global network outage late on Thursday, which executives attributed to a key software issue.
The service interruption was announced on X at about 22:00 (SA time) on Thursday by Starlink’s official handle.
Users in the United States and Europe began reporting problems with the service an hour before the Starlink announcement on Downdetector, a website that tracks issues in internet-based services.
“Service will be restored shortly,” South Africa-born Musk posted on X, apologising for the outage.
“SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
The tech billionaire later reposted a statement from Starlink Vice President of Engineering Michael Nicolls, who said the disruption was due to the “failure of key internal software services that operate the core network.”
Nicolls also said the Starlink network had “mostly recovered” from the outage, which “lasted approximately 2.5 hours.”
About two hours later, Starlink posted that the issue was resolved and that service was restored.
User reports on Downdetector began after 21:00 (SA time), peaking at 21:34 (SA time) and tapering out at 05:00 (SA time).
Starlink, a subsidiary of Musk’s space rocket venture SpaceX, has deployed more than 6 000 low-orbit satellites to provide high-speed internet to isolated and poorly connected areas.
Starlink currently leads the satellite internet race, with European competitor Eutelsat – which is backed by France and the United Kingdom – lagging behind with 600 satellites.
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By Garrin Lambley © Agence France-Presse
