Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellite division, Starlink, issued a “degraded service” warning on Saturday as the planet was being ravaged by the strongest solar-induced geomagnetic storm in the past 20 years.
Starlink is a major participant in satellite internet, controlling over 60% of the approximately 7,500 satellites in orbit around the planet.
Musk stated earlier in a post on X that the geomagnetic storm was putting a lot of strain on the Starlink satellites, but so far they were holding up.
Laptops 1000The largest storm since October 2003, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is expected to linger into the weekend and pose a threat to satellite navigation, power grids, and navigation systems, among other services.
The global internet coverage provided by the Starlink network is made possible by the hundreds of satellites in low-Earth orbit communicating with one another in space at the speed of light through inter-satellite laser links.
