Starlink Outage Disrupts Global Internet Access, Sparks Cyberattack Speculation

Elon Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink experienced a rare and massive global outage on Thursday, leaving tens of thousands of users offline for over two hours. The disruption, caused by a failure in internal software services, affected users across the United States and Europe, sparking speculation over a possible cyberattack or botched software update.

According to outage tracker Downdetector, the outage began around 3 p.m. EDT (12:30 a.m. IST), with over 61,000 user reports flooding in. The service, operated by SpaceX, has over 6 million users in 140+ countries and is widely used in rural areas, emergency services, and military communication.

Starlink acknowledged the issue on its official X account, stating, “We are actively implementing a solution.” The company’s VP of Engineering, Michael Nicolls, later confirmed that service was restored after 2.5 hours. He attributed the disruption to a “failure of key internal software services that operate the core network.”

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also apologized on X, assuring users that the company is working to “remedy the root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Industry experts called the outage “unusual” for Starlink, which is known for its resilience and rapid scalability. Doug Madory, an analyst at Kentik, said it appeared to be the longest and most widespread Starlink outage to date.

The failure comes as Starlink ramps up its global network with more powerful satellites and ventures into direct-to-cell services in partnership with T-Mobile, aiming to provide emergency text messaging via satellite.

Gregory Falco, director of Cornell University’s space cybersecurity lab, said, “I’d speculate this is a bad software update, not entirely dissimilar to the CrowdStrike-Windows incident last year, or even a potential cyberattack.”

It remains unclear whether SpaceX’s Starshield, its classified military satellite division with contracts worth billions from the Pentagon, was affected.
 

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