(Photo by Matthias Balk/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)
This weekend's major solar storm seemed to cause only minor, sporadic disruptions for SpaceX's Starlink system, despite a warning from the company about "degraded service."
On Friday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk warned about the storm’s impact, which resulted from the Sun emitting several solar flares. "Major geomagnetic solar storm happening right now. Biggest in a long time. Starlink satellites are under a lot of pressure, but holding up so far,” Musk tweeted.
The official Starlink site also warned about "degraded service" on Saturday. But it looks like the satellite internet service pulled through the solar storm, according to many consumers.
In some cases, the storm caused some customers to temporarily receive slower than normal speeds, or experience short outages, according to posts on social media. "Here in WI (Wisconsin), I had several 10- to 15-second dropouts, and latency went long too. Still it kept working," wrote one user on Facebook.
Meanwhile, other users posted speed tests showing their Starlink systems continuing to receive high download speeds, despite the solar storm. "I've observed no outages despite having beautiful northern lights over the last 2 days,” wrote one user on Reddit.
The solar flares from the Sun sent a burst of radiation toward Earth, hitting the planet’s magnetosphere and increasing the potential for disruptions to radio signals flowing to and from satellites orbiting around the planet.
The storm also drew scrutiny because it reached an intensity of G5 on Friday evening—the first time such activity has been observed from the Sun since 2003, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
SpaceX didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. But the company was monitoring whether 13 recently launched Starlink satellites would make it through the solar system without impact. The official Starlink account has since tweeted: "All Starlink satellites on-orbit weathered the geomagnetic storm and remain healthy."