SpaceX's Starlink satellite network was back up and running on Friday as engineers hunted for the root cause of one of its biggest international outages the night before, a rare disruption for the powerful internet system set off by an internal software failure.

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

SpaceX Starlink has been on a satellite launch spree lately. Last week, the Elon Musk-owned company successfully sent 24 Starlink satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenbueg Space Force base, and now it is planning to add 28 more satellites to its constellation.

SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service network has been restored after an hours-long outage, the Elon Musk-led unit said in a post on X.

Complaints spiked on Downdetector.com around noon PT on Thursday. The satellite service now says it's 'mostly recovered,' though some people are still not connected.

The issue concerns sunlight reflecting off the satellites’ surfaces. SpaceX has attempted to reduce the brightness of the reflected light by coating the satellites in a dark material, and also by adding reflective film to redirect the sunlight away from Earth.

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

China’s biggest networks have deployed less than 1 percent of their planned satellites, falling far behind SpaceX for dominance in space communications.