SpaceX's Starlink suffered one of its biggest international outages on Thursday when an internal software failure knocked tens of thousands of users offline, a rare disruption for Elon Musk's powerful satellite internet system.

Tens of thousands of people across the globe have been impacted by the Starlink outage, which has prevented users in multiple countries from accessing the internet

Starlink is a satellite internet constellation that works as an international telecommunication provider, part of the American aerospace company SpaceX, founded by controversial billionaire Elon Musk. The network provides coverage to around 130 countries and territories, aiming to provide global mobile broadband.

Starlink appears to have largely recovered from a widespread outage on Thursday afternoon that affected its services across the United States and other parts of the world. Reports of service disruptions flooded outage tracker Down Detector earlier in the afternoon, with users experiencing internet outages and, in some cases, total blackouts.

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency has bought Starlink services — but also fell into the crosshairs of Musk. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in 2024, Musk said FEMA was blocking deliveries of the terminals, a claim the agency called false. FEMA did not respond to repeated requests for comment on its use of Starlink.