On Thursday, SpaceX’s Starlink suffered one of its largest global outages due to an internal software failure, knocking tens of thousands of users offline across the U.S. and Europe.

The outage began around 3 PM EDT and affected up to 61,000 users, according to Downdetector. Starlink, with over 6 million users in more than 140 countries, confirmed the disruption and stated that it was working on a fix.

After about 2.5 hours, Starlink VP Michael Nicolls stated that services were restored and attributed the issue to a failure in key internal software services. Elon Musk also apologised, promising a permanent fix.

Experts said such a widespread outage is extremely rare for Starlink, which is known for reliability. Some speculated it could have been caused by a faulty software update or possibly a cyberattack.

Starlink continues to expand its network with more powerful satellites and aims to provide direct-to-cell services for emergency messaging. It is also used by militaries and industries needing high-speed internet in remote areas.

It remains unclear whether the outage impacted SpaceX’s other services, including Starshield, which handles U.S. military satellite operations.

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