Starlink blackout hits thousands before sudden recovery; Here’s what happened

Weeks after a rare global Starlink blackout triggered confusion and panic around the world, especially in areas like Ukraine, where internet access can literally be a matter of life and death, another similar yet brief occurrence has frustrated users everywhere.

Indeed, a short-lived global outage of Elon Musk’s satellite internet service affected tens of thousands of people, including Ukrainian military forces across the entire frontline, before coming back online for most users, according to the data from tracking website Downdetector.com on September 15.

Specifically, at one point, there were as many as 47,992 outage reports on Downdetector, and that’s only coming from those who bothered to report it. Although Starlink’s website reported the outage, stating that “Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage. Our team is investigating,” the message has since been removed.

Some users have taken to social media platform X to report the situation, voicing their frustrations and concerns around what’s been happening, and asking others, including in their specific region, if they’ve experienced the same problems.

Possible cause: solar storms

Others have complained of the number of outages in recent months after years of uninterrupted operations, but some have suggested that the more numerous geomagnetic storms, including a G3 storm happening today, could be the cause of these satellite disruptions.

And while for many people, this caused only a minor inconvenience, in Ukraine, it was a lot more serious. Notably, the Ukrainian military’s commander of drone forces, Robert ‘Magyar’ Brovdi, shared on Telegram that Starlink was “down again along the entire front.” He later updated that the access was “gradually recovering.”

Meanwhile, this is the second Starlink outage in the last two months, the previous one affecting internet-based communications around the globe in late July, but at that time, the company was a lot more upfront, letting everyone know it was aware of it and working to resolve the issue.