SpaceX-owner Elon Musk says ‘sorry’ after universal Starlink outage

Billionaire Elon Musk has apologized to Starlink customers after they were left without network coverage due to an internal issue.  

According to Michael Nicolls, the Vice President of Starlink Engineering, customers experienced disruption to their internet service for around two and a half hours.  

The website Downdetector, which tracks online outages, indicates that the problem began on July 24, 2025, at approximately 18:30 (UTC). 

In its first acknowledgement of the problem, Starlink wrote on social media: “Starlink is currently in a network outage and we are actively implementing a solution. We appreciate your patience, we’ll share an update once this issue is resolved.” 

Around 25 minutes later, Musk posted his own message, saying: “Service will be restored shortly. Sorry for the outage. SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” 

Service will be restored shortly.

Sorry for the outage.

SpaceX will remedy root cause to ensure it doesn’t happen again. https://t.co/q1bsTVtMZ7

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 24, 2025

Eventually, the issue was evidently resolved with the restoration of Starlink’s service. 

“We understand how important connectivity is and apologize for the disruption.” the company wrote. 

Nicolls later explained that the outage was due to the “failure of key internal software services that operate the core network”. 

“We apologize for the temporary disruption in our service; we are deeply committed to providing a highly reliable network and will fully root cause this issue and ensure it does not occur again,” he added. 

At present Starlink services around six million customers, including some major airlines which have invested heavily in the technology to provide internet connectivity on their flights.  

Qatar Airways, airBaltic and Hawaiian Airlines have all begun introducing Starlink on their flights, while Air France and Virgin Atlantic are among an increasing number of carriers that have released plans to roll out the service.