XM has issued another update about the service outage, this time giving more color behind exactly what happened.

"We quickly identified the problem and are working hard to return to our normal levels of service. The problem occurred during the loading of software to a critical component of our satellite broadcast system, which resulted in a loss of signal from one of our satellites. We expect normal service to resume midday today (eastern daylight time)."

XM also apologized for the downtime, and encourages users to go to XM Radio Online if you're near a computer.

Read the full statement here.

UPDATE: The statement was updated to give more clarity on the outage, and so I've updated this post to reflect the changes.

XM issued an email update with the geeky subject line "Service Degradation Alert" that gave the following info:

"You may be experiencing temporary degraded performance with your XM reception at the present time. XM is aware of the issue and working diligently to resolve it as soon as possible. We anticipate full signal strength will be restored by early Tuesday morning."

At the time of posting, I still don't have signal here in Connecticut.

As far as I know, XM-3 (Rhythm) was experiencing performance issues and needed a software update to fix. As part of the process of updating, the satellite needed to go offline while it was being readjusted. (If any XM engineers have a more detailed description, I'd love to know.)

David Cavossa, of the Satellite Industry Association, said it perfectly. "These are very complex machines," he said. "Once they're launched we can't just send the Maytag repairman up there."