Elon Musk’s Starlink says it is mostly recovered from an hours-long network outage impacting tens of thousands of internet users globally on Thursday afternoon.
“Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage. Our team is investigating,” the company posted in a banner at the top of the website’s homepage.
The SpaceX company announced it was aware of the outage on X at about 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time, stating it was “actively implementing a solution” and would provide updates once resolved.
By 6:23 p.m. ET, Michael Nicolls, Vice President of Starlink Engineering at SpaceX, posted that “Starlink has now mostly recovered from the network outage, which lasted approximately 2.5 hours.”
Nicholls reported the outage was “due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network.”
“We apologize for the temporary disruption in our service; 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 said, with Musk echoing the sentiment on his own X account.
Starlink has now mostly recovered from the network outage, which lasted approximately 2.5 hours. The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network. We apologize for the temporary disruption in our service; we are deeply committed to… https://t.co/ffFYM1Z7tD
undefined Michael Nicolls (@michaelnicollsx) July 24, 2025
The outage began at about 3:13 p.m. ET, with service returning online about 5:30 p.m.
At its peak, around 3:40 p.m.ET, the internet monitoring site Downdetector showed close to 70,000 users impacted in the United States. Another 10,000 users in the UK had also reported issues connecting to the satellite internet service.
More than half of all user reports claimed a total blackout, with a third only having problems with internet connectivity.
Although many users complained about the outage, with several rumors of a cyberattack, other users noted that it was the first major outage experienced by Starlink in years.
“To all those who are crying due to Starlink being down. I've had it for 3 YEARS AND THIS IS THE FIRST OUTAGE. SO STOP CRYING OVER NOTHING. AND TO THAT PERSON who said they want compensation, you are a…” a Starlink user from Australia posted on Downdetector.
Since 2020, Starlink has launched close to 8,000 satellites, offering service to about six million users in over 140 countries and territories.
It’s unclear if the outage impacted SpaceX's other satellite-based services that rely on the Starlink network. Starshield, the company's military satellite business unit, has billions of dollars' worth of contracts with the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies, Reuters reported.
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