SpaceX Throttling of Ukraine's Satellite Service Preceded Deaths, Injuries
Ukrainian interceptors failed at high speed after limits were placed on Starshield, the military satellite network used by the country's armed forces.
By Chloe Kapoor ·
Ukraine's military relies on US-built satellite links to defend against Russian drone and missile attacks, and last week one of those links was dialed back without warning.
Starshield, a defense-focused variant of SpaceX's Starlink network, was restricted so that terminals moving above a certain speed could no longer connect. Ukrainian interceptor systems designed to counter Russian bomb-carrying drones stopped functioning at high speed, leaving energy infrastructure more exposed to strikes. Two people died and at least 17 were injured, according to reports on the disruption.
Ukraine's armed forces said they were not told the change was coming. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy characterized the throttling as a message from the United States, delivered amid rising friction between Zelenskyy and President Donald Trump. Public criticism followed, directed at Trump for distancing the US from Ukraine's defense and at SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk for carrying it out.
Accounts of who ordered the slowdown changed over several days. Musk first said SpaceX does not control Starshield and that the US military makes such calls, while the White House said it did not act. Later reporting said Musk put the idea to Trump and Trump approved it, after which Musk directed the restrictions himself. Service in Ukraine has since been restored.
The episode has put renewed attention on how much of the space sector sits inside one company. SpaceX has placed more than 10,000 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit, launching them on Falcon 9 rockets at costs rivals have not matched. Wendy Whitman Cobb of the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base said SpaceX effectively holds a monopoly on launch; she pointed to United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab as competitors that fall short on launch frequency, mass, scale and cost. Oğuz Karasu, a space economist at the Oxford Space Initiative, described the dominance as practical rather than legal, noting that launch accounts for about 8 percent of the space industry while the remaining 92 percent depends on it to operate.
Ukraine has faced limits on US satellite access before. In 2022, coverage was not extended to support a counterattack in Crimea. Andrew Reddie of the University of California, Berkeley said SpaceX launches support constellations that SpaceX itself owns, leaving little commercial reason to place rival networks in orbit, a pattern he called close to an antitrust problem. Falcon 9 prices for low Earth orbit have risen, and Starlink subscription rates have climbed since the service began its 2020 beta.
The concentration of launch capacity reaches civilians as well as militaries. Whitman Cobb said a GPS outage could disrupt fuel pumps, ATMs, financial transactions and ambulance dispatch. SpaceX is reportedly phasing out Falcon 9 and accepting no new missions from 2028, a timetable that leaves the Space Force short of launch options for military satellites and raises questions about NASA's access to Crew Dragon. A Falcon 9 problem in February briefly grounded the rocket ahead of the Crew-12 launch. Michele Scataglini of the Oxford Space Initiative said the market needs more competition, "otherwise it's not a market." Reddie said the core security concern is a non-state actor making decisions as a government would, and that this case affected Ukraine's ability to defend itself.
Source: The Verge
