SpaceX's Starlink suffered one of its biggest international outages on Thursday when an internal software failure knocked tens of thousands of users offline, a rare disruption for Elon Musk's powerful satellite internet system.

Tens of thousands of people across the globe have been impacted by the Starlink outage, which has prevented users in multiple countries from accessing the internet

Starlink is a satellite internet constellation that works as an international telecommunication provider, part of the American aerospace company SpaceX, founded by controversial billionaire Elon Musk. The network provides coverage to around 130 countries and territories, aiming to provide global mobile broadband.

Elon Musk issued a statement following a major global outage that knocked thousands of Starlink users offline late Thursday.

Caused by a rare internal software glitch, the outage disrupted critical communications, including Ukraine's military operations. Musk and SpaceX have promised corrective action and assured users the issue won't be repeated.

Elon Musk's Starlink was down for hours last night following a global outage - and users vented their fury, demanding refunds for the satellite internet service

Elon Musk-run SpaceX's Starlink satellite-powered internet services faced an outage on a global scale, but the company has fixed it.

Reports of service disruptions flooded outage tracker DownDetector, with users experiencing internet outages and, in some cases, total blackouts. Starlink and its founder, Elon Musk, confirmed the outage and said they were investigating the issue.