Fi, signing deals with major carriers and pressing for business with trend-setting West Asian airlines as rivals retool to protect market share

Elon Musk's satellite internet service has been absolutely critical to the country's defense. But staying connected through war relies on innovation and rehab work from “The People’s Starlink.”

Musk's network, which connects to more than 8,000 satellites in low-Earth orbit, has more than 6 million users worldwide.

The service Down Detector reported a large spike in user error reports at this time, which peaked just before 2 p.m. The majority of these users reported either a "total blackout" of Starlink services or problems with their satellite internet. (Disclosure: Down Detector is owned by Ziff Davis, the same company that owns Mashable.)

According to a recent report from the speed test site Ookla, Starlink users receive median speeds of 105Mbps down and 15Mbps up. That's plenty of bandwidth for many households but it still falls short of what the Federal Communications Commission defines as broadband. (Disclosure: Ookla is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)

In testimony before a Senate committee in June, the top general in the US Space Force said it is "worrisome" that China is moving in this direction. Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Chief of Space Operations, used China's emergence as an argument for developing space weapons, euphemistically called "counter-space capabilities."

A Starlink device is a useful tool straight out of the box, but there are additional settings you can take advantage of to unlock its full potential.

NASA and IBM have released a new open-source machine learning model to help scientists better understand and predict the physics and weather patterns of the sun. Surya, trained on over a decade’s worth of NASA solar data, should help give scientists an early warning when a dangerous solar flare is likely to hit Earth.

Starlink operator SpaceX is continuing its fight against state plans to expand fiber broadband availability. After saying the Trump administration should deny a Virginia proposal, SpaceX is taking the same approach in a fight against Louisiana.

Starlink has received approval to use Aadhaar-based verification for customer onboarding in India, marking another step toward its long-awaited commercial launch.

SpaceX sent another batch of its Starlink broadband internet satellites into low Earth orbit today (Aug. 18), atop a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.