On Saturday, the American company Starlink, a provider of satellite internet services owned by billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX, warned of a "service disruption" due to Earth experiencing the largest geomagnetic storm in two decades as a result of solar activity. Starlink owns about 60% of the nearly 7,500 satellites orbiting Earth and is a dominant player in the satellite internet field. Musk stated in a post on the platform X earlier that "Starlink's satellites are under a lot of pressure due to the geomagnetic solar storm, but they are holding up so far."
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) indicated that "this storm is the largest of its kind since October 2003 and is likely to continue today and tomorrow, posing risks to services including navigation systems, electrical grids, and satellite navigation." Thousands of Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit use laser links between satellites to transmit data among themselves at the speed of light, allowing the network to provide internet coverage around the world.
