Starlink kept me connected to the Internet without fail—until Thursday

A Ukrainian soldier of the 61st Separate Mechanized Brigade uses the Starlink system during military exercises in the Chernihiv region of Ukraine in June 2023. Credit: Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto via Getty Images

A rare global interruption in the Starlink satellite Internet network knocked subscribers offline for more than two hours on Thursday, the longest widespread outage since SpaceX opened the service to consumers nearly five years ago.

The outage affected civilian and military users, creating an inconvenience for many but cutting off a critical lifeline for those who rely on Starlink for military operations, health care, and other applications.

Michael Nicolls, SpaceX's vice president of Starlink engineering, wrote on X that the network outage lasted approximately 2.5 hours.

"The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network," Nicolls wrote. "We apologize for the temporary disruption in our service; we are deeply ...