Satellite Internet Outage: Elon Musk's Starlink Faces Downtime Once More
In a disappointing turn of events, SpaceX's satellite internet service provider, Starlink, experienced a network outage on Monday, August 18, 2025, affecting users in the United States, United Kingdom, South America, Australia, and Ukraine, among other countries. This outage comes just two weeks after the service faced a similar disruption on July 24, 2025.
The root cause of the August 18 outage was a misconfiguration introduced during a routine software update to the core network's internal software services. This update was designed to improve inter-satellite communication performance and latency, but instead triggered a cascading failure by disrupting how satellites relay data to one another, resulting in degraded communication links and widespread loss of connectivity among ground terminals.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, described the incident as a "cascading failure triggered by a single node update," caused by a configuration error during the software update process. The failure was in the key internal software services operating the core Starlink network, not in the satellites themselves or hardware.
The problem originated in the terrestrial infrastructure (ground computing clusters) managing the satellite network, highlighting a central point of failure rather than a distributed satellite issue. This revelation has raised concerns about the potential vulnerabilities in the system's management and the need for more robust safeguards to prevent such incidents in the future.
The outage affected millions of Starlink users, with Downdetector registering over 43,000 complaints about the service disruption. Following the July 24 outage, Starlink's CEO, Gwynne Shotwell, issued an apology statement, and it is expected that a similar response will be made following this latest incident.
It is worth noting that Starlink provides internet to 6 million people across 140 countries, and SpaceX has a proposal in partnership with the U.S. Space Force to increase the number of launches from Vandenberg from 50 to up to 100 annually. This expansion aims to further improve the service's reach and reliability, but the recent outages have raised questions about the service's current ability to handle its growing user base.
Some users expressed frustration, stating they missed work or important meetings due to the outage. The number of complaints decreased to 2800 when the internet service was restored, indicating that while the outage was significant, it did not last as long as some users had initially feared.
The Starlink team is currently working to identify the root cause of the misconfiguration and to implement measures to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future. As the service continues to grow and evolve, it is crucial that such issues are addressed promptly and effectively to maintain user trust and confidence in the service.
[1] SpaceNews. (2025, August 19). Starlink outage caused by software configuration error. Retrieved from https://spacenews.com/starlink-outage-caused-by-software-configuration-error/ [2] The Verge. (2025, August 19). Starlink outage: What we know so far. Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2025/8/19/21432413/starlink-outage-august-18-2025-cause-users-affected-spacex-elon-musk [4] Ars Technica. (2025, August 19). Starlink outage: What we know about the cause and impact. Retrieved from https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/08/starlink-outage-what-we-know-about-the-cause-and-impact/
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