Starlink outage?

[Lou Schneider]

There are reports on Facebook about a system-wide 45 minute Starlink outage yesterday. Apparently a small solar flare arrived and the Starlink satellites have to be turned off to implement their protection protocol. I couldn't find any reports of geosynchyncronous satellites being affected, they're designed to ride out low level solar flares without shutting down.

Here's a screen grab showing the outage. I included it because it will scroll off soon. From https://downdetector.com/status/starlink/

 

[zulu]

Yeah, my Starlink died yesterday for a good half hour right after my new router software update.

 

[LarsMac]

I had seen an outage on my stats, yesterday, but it was happening while we were doing morning chores, and making breakfast.

 

[Wasillaguy]

Looks like nothing yet from the horse's mouth, other than it's fixed.

 

[UTTransplant]

So that’s what happened! Kevin went out and messed with ours, then it randomly started working again after a few restarts.

 

[John From Detroit]

So that’s what happened! Kevin went out and messed with ours, then it randomly started working again after a few restarts.

The Root post says a solar flair... Solar Flairs affect Radio. thankfully they travel a bit slower then light speed for some reason and we now have satellites (solar observatories) parked in solar orbit shooting video earthwards. IN fact one of them is displayed on a clock beside me. (That's not as special as it sounds). SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids has a lot of info and another site with lots of info is Space Weather Woman – Dr. Tamitha Skov – Dr. Tamitha Skov– The Space Weather Woman Oh and she's a ham radio operator (The device with the solar photo is called "Hamclock" and has a lot of ham radio info on it's "Dial"
Solar activity affects all manner of radio.. From AM broadcast (And below) up to Microwave and above.
Space weather woman has a regular segment in Ham Nation which will live stream on the Ham Radio Crash Course You tube page this evening I think 9pm Eastern

 

[Skookum]

Yep, can report it did go out for a while yesterday evening in Mountain Time. It's our only connection here in Wyoming at the moment.

 

[Lou Schneider]

I think it's significant that Starlink had to shut down their entire system to ride out a relatively minor solar event that other satellites experienced without issue. These outages are likely to increase as we enter a period of increasing solar activity.

 

[Skookum]

Not sure I buy the solar event rumor, and Starlink referenced it as a "network issue". Could be any number of things including expired certificates or a patch gone awry, that had to be backed out.

Also; it didn't appear other satellite services were affected at the same time.

 

[Kevin Means]

Hmmmm.... that's what it was huh. Yeah, ours went out too. I got a message on the app saying they were looking into it. Nice to know what it was.

 

[Lou Schneider]

Not sure I buy the solar event rumor, and Starlink referenced it as a "network issue". Could be any number of things including expired certificates or a patch gone awry, that had to be backed out.

Also; it didn't appear other satellite services were affected at the same time.

It corresponded with a minor solar flux x-ray event, shown as the peak going into the yellow zone in this screen grab from Spaceweatherlive

As far as other satellites not being affected, exactly my point.

 

[SpencerPJ]

Y'all need to be thankful; this happens monthly with Comcast in a fairly large city. Honks da wife off when she's on conference calls a lot.

 

[Skookum]

It corresponded with a minor solar flux x-ray event, shown as the peak going into the yellow zone in this screen grab from Spaceweatherlive

As far as other satellites not being affected, exactly my point.

View attachment 167541

Is correlation causation? SpaceX/Starlink's statement on the outage mentioned nothing of solar activity. They still have yet to provide an update on the cause; that's typical when it's ineptitude or preventable failure i.e. patching gone awry.

 

[Wasillaguy]

Usually patches are done in off-peak hours. Assuming the U.S. is the biggest customer, they didn't hit the "outage window"

 

[John From Detroit]

Not sure I buy the solar event rumor, and Starlink referenced it as a "network issue". Could be any number of things including expired certificates or a patch gone awry, that had to be backed out.

Also; it didn't appear other satellite services were affected at the same time.

it may be they are using the solar flair as an excuse.
and Hughes. for example. has a daily outage due to the sun.. IN case you forgot. Anytime the sun is "Behind" the bird(Satellite) there's an outage. Most sat services have that problem.

 

[Wasillaguy]

Geosynchronous satellites experience sun outage for only a few days each spring and fall. The dates/times are known and published and vary by geographic location of each earth station. Other than those known windows, telecom providers routinely achieve better than 98% availability on sat links.

 

[Onyrlef]

Last year Southwest Airline here explained their unusually high rate of sudden cancelations as being weather related, a weather event that apprently affected no airline but Southwest.