Tens of thousands of Starlink users across the globe were left without internet access for hours on Thursday following a rare system failure, one SpaceX has now confirmed was caused by an internal software malfunction.
The disruption, which lasted two and a half hours, affected users from remote emergency services in Canada to Ukrainian troops engaged in active defence operations.
The interruption began at approximately 3 p.m. EDT (8 p.m. WAT), with outage reports quickly surpassing 61,000 on Downdetector. It wasn’t limited to one region.
North America, Europe, and parts of Asia were all hit, raising alarms about the network’s reliability, especially given its expanding role in defence, telecommunications, and emergency response infrastructure.
Michael Nicolls, vice president of Starlink Engineering, said, “The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network.”
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also took to X to issue an apology, saying: “Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
Despite these assurances, the timing and scale of the failure have left worries. It came just 24 hours after T-Mobile launched its Starlink-powered direct-to-cell service, an initiative launched to deliver satellite-based mobile connectivity in areas with little or no traditional coverage. Some analysts now question whether the integration added unanticipated stress to the system.
Security experts have begun drawing parallels with last year’s CrowdStrike software debacle, which brought down millions of Windows devices globally. Gregory Falco, who leads a space and cybersecurity research lab at Cornell University, suggested the Starlink incident could stem from similar roots:
“I’d speculate this is a bad software update, not entirely dissimilar to the CrowdStrike mess with Windows last year, or a cyberattack.”
Although SpaceX insists a software failure is to blame, others aren’t so quick to rule out sabotage. A malfunction of this magnitude, impacting users in over 140 countries simultaneously, has prompted questions about the robustness of Starlink’s internal network segmentation and system redundancies.
In northern Canada, the blackout reportedly hampered ambulance dispatch and wildfire coordination. In Ukraine, where Starlink forms the backbone of military field communications, troops temporarily lost service mid-operation, their longest downtime since adopting the service in 2022.
While it’s not clear if the outage affected Starshield, SpaceX’s military-grade satellite arm, any potential knock-on effects could carry significant national security implications. Starshield supports sensitive U.S. Department of Defence and intelligence missions under billion-dollar contracts. A systemic vulnerability, even if accidental, could invite future exploitation.
SpaceX’s satellite fleet now exceeds 8,000 in low-Earth orbit. The company’s aggressive expansion has helped close digital gaps in underserved regions. But Thursday’s failure stresses the hidden fragility of even the most advanced space-based systems.
