Have you ever had your internet suddenly stop working right when you were about to win a game or watch a favorite show? 😫 On Thursday, that’s exactly what happened to many people using Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite internet service!
Around 3 p.m. Eastern Time, Starlink users from the U.S. and Europe started experiencing an unexpected outage. It’s like the internet just took a nap! 💤 Thousands of users reported the issue, and everyone was wondering what was going on.
Starlink has over 6 million users in about 140 countries and regions. That’s a lot of people! 🌍 The company quickly posted on their X account (the platform formerly known as Twitter) saying, “We are actively implementing a solution.” Everyone was hopeful the internet would be back soon.
After about 2.5 hours, the service started working again. Phew! 😅 Michael Nicolls, the vice president of Starlink Engineering, explained that the outage was due to a failure of important software that runs their network. He apologized for the trouble and promised to find out what went wrong.
Even Elon Musk himself said sorry! “Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” he wrote on X.
This was a rare event for Starlink, which is known for being reliable and super fast. Some experts were surprised and wondered if it was a glitch or maybe a cyberattack. Doug Madory, an internet expert, mentioned that such a big outage was unusual for Starlink.
Since 2020, SpaceX has launched over 8,000 Starlink satellites into space! 🚀 These satellites orbit the Earth and provide internet to places that might not have good connections otherwise. It’s like having internet from space! 🌟
Even though the outage was a bit frustrating, the quick response from Starlink shows they are working hard to keep everyone connected. Let’s hope the internet stays up and running! 📶
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
