It appears that Starlink users in warmer regions are encountering overheating problems.

As reported by ArsTechnica, one Reddit user did. The user, who lives in Arizona, received the error message "Offline: thermal shutdown" on his Starlink app. His "Dishy McFlatface" overheated.

Calling Starlink support, this user, who identified himself as SocietyTomorrow on Reddit, was told that "Dishy goes into thermal shutdown at 122F and reboots when it reaches 104F."

SocietyTomorrow had to do something out of the ordinary to get Dishy to work.

"The lowest temperature in July is 108F. I have to water the internet with a garden hose to get it up and running again.... It feels so wrong."

Well, watering the Starlink dish seems to have worked. Pointing the sprinkler at Dishy, SocietyTomorrow soon heard YouTube playback resume.

In an interview with ArsTechnica, SocietyTomorrow (first name Martin) said, "When you turn off the sprinklers, [the dish] heats up again, turns on for a few minutes, then turns off for thermal shutdown. The overheating started around 11:30 AM that day and came back again around 7 PM. I am currently heading to the hardware store to get materials to make a solar shade/sail around the dish to make sure the connection and speed are not affected.

Dishy is affected by the extreme heat because it is not a standard satellite dish. A standard satellite dish is a surface that, for all intents and purposes, bounces radio waves off of. There are no electronics built into the plate itself; Starlink's Dishy uses a phased-array antenna, with components inside that track satellites overhead; in Dishy's case, there is a motor that moves to track satellites passing overhead; the Dishy's antenna is a "phased-array" antenna, which is a "phased-array" antenna, with components inside that track satellites overhead.

However, the electronic components have thermal limits, which in Dishy's case range from 22 degrees below zero to 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

In an interview with Vice's Motherboard, engineer and YouTuber Ken Keiter said, "At some point, the thermal energy absorbed by Dishy's face and dumped by the component into the backplate, the air surrounding it, and the enclosure The total exceeds the rate at which that energy can be dissipated into the external environment."

Thus, in future revisions of Dishy, it appears that SpaceX will need to find another thermal solution. According to Cater, this may be possible with software modifications. However, it is likely that the design would need to be significantly modified to account for extreme weather conditions.