- Outage began at 03:00 UTC, disrupting connectivity across all continents
- SpaceX confirms the incident stemmed from a flawed software update to its satellite constellation
What happened: System-wide service disruption
Starlink experienced its most severe outage to date on 15 July 2025, with global service interruptions lasting nearly 12 hours. The disruption began during a routine software update to the company’s 5,200+ satellite constellation, which introduced a critical bug in the network’s authentication protocols.
SpaceX engineers initiated a full constellation reboot at 08:30 UTC, but service was only fully restored after deploying a patch to ground stations and user terminals. According to SpaceX’s status page, the outage affected 98% of active terminals, including critical infrastructure like Ukraine’s military communications and remote Australian hospitals.
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Why it’s important
The incident highlights the growing vulnerabilities of relying on single-provider satellite networks for essential services. With 3 million users across 42 nations relying on Starlink, outages risk lives in remote. Aviation tracking service Flightradar24 reported 1,200+ commercial flights experiencing communication blackouts during the incident, while maritime authorities confirmed 47 ships in transoceanic routes lost emergency monitoring capabilities for several hours.
While SpaceX has since implemented new fail-safe protocols including staggered update rollouts, the unprecedented scale of this outage is likely to accelerate global regulatory scrutiny. The EU’s Digital Infrastructure Commissioner has already called for mandatory redundancy measures that would require critical services to maintain backup connections through alternative providers, a policy that could reshape the satellite internet market’s competitive landscape.
