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Starlink goes dark in a dramatic fashion, making headlines everyone. Yes, you read that right. This blackout was a gut punch to users who believed in the promise of seamless, decentralized internet access from the stars. SpaceX’s satellite internet service experienced a rare but widespread global blackout, its first major one of 2025.
The outage began around 3:15PM ET, with users receiving cryptic error messages such as “no healthy upstream.”
By 4:05PM, Starlink acknowledged the issue via X, stating, “Starlink is currently in a network outage and we are actively implementing a solution. We appreciate your patience.”
Roughly 2.5 hours later, Starlink Engineering VP Michael Nicolls posted that the network had “mostly recovered.” The cause? A failure of key internal software services, vague wording for a disruption that effectively grounded thousands of users who rely on Starlink for daily connectivity.
Starlink Goes Dark: Millions Left Offline
From rural homesteads in the U.S. to entire service zones globally, users were left in digital limbo, unable to access the internet. Starlink’s silence during the crucial first hour only worsened concerns. Global connectivity watchdog NetBlocks reported Starlink’s functionality had dropped to just 16% of normal during the blackout.
Is the Musk Tech Empire In Need of Massive Improvement?
Earlier this week, Grok, the AI chatbot integrated into X (formerly Twitter), began replying with outdated or irrelevant answers, a problem largely unresolved. In June, X’s real-time news feeds glitched, flooding timelines with recycled posts and API errors.
Then there’s Tesla’s app, which briefly stopped unlocking cars in some regions last month, all while Neuralink’s vague health disclosures raised eyebrows. While Musk’s ventures push boundaries, they also seem increasingly susceptible to mysterious blackouts and backend chaos.
