How many satellites are in orbit, and who owns them?

Steps

1. No API. Downloaded the SATCAT CSV (70,953 objects, 27,969 payloads) and the GP active CSV (16,682 objects) once each, plus the owner-code table. Kept PAY rows, split them by decay date and status code, classed each by APOGEE and PERIGEE, counted by OWNER code and by name family, and counted launches and decays by calendar year from LAUNCH_DATE and DECAY_DATE. For every owner in CelesTrak's Boxscore (136 rows) the payloads on orbit, decayed, total and active equal this script's counts (0 differences).
2. An active payload is a SATCAT row with OBJECT_TYPE PAY, no decay date and an operational status of + (operational), P (partially operational), B (backup or standby), S (spare) or X (extended mission). This is the definition CelesTrak's Boxscore uses for Active. The growth chart counts every payload (active or not) launched and not yet decayed, because SATCAT keeps no history of operational status.
3. Orbit class: LEO has an apogee below 2,000 km; GEO has perigee and apogee both within 2,000 km of 35,786 km; MEO sits between with a perigee of 2,000 km or higher; HEO is every other Earth orbit. Payloads that orbit the Sun, the Moon, Mars or a Lagrange point are counted apart.
4. Constellations: a family of at least 200 active payloads sharing a name prefix. The script stops if that set of families changes.

70 yearly rows (1957 to 2026) from 27,969 payloads. Active: 17,250. Unit: Number of payloads; altitudes in kilometres. Every derived figure on this page (changes, indexes, averages, counts) is computed from the published rows, and the table under each chart says how.

Checks

• For all 136 owners in CelesTrak's own Boxscore page, payloads on orbit, decayed, total and active equal this page's counts: 0 differences (20,255 on orbit, 17,250 active, 7,714 decayed).
• The yearly series ends at 20,255, the number of payloads with no decay date, and its launched and decayed columns add up to the catalog totals.
• The globe file (sat_snapshot.json) has 16,682 rows, one per object in CelesTrak's active list; 16,662 of them have apogee and perigee within 15 km of the catalog's own values when recomputed from their mean motion (median difference 0.38 km).
• The script stops if a SATCAT or GP column, object type, status code or date format changes, or if CelesTrak answers with anything but HTTP 200.

Caveats

• Status codes come from CelesTrak's catalog and can lag: a satellite can be marked operational after it fails. The count changes daily; this page is a snapshot of Oct 8, 2026.
• The growth chart counts every payload launched and not yet decayed, because the catalog keeps no history of which satellites were working. It is not a count of working satellites.
• Owner is the owner or operator as CelesTrak codes it, not where a satellite was built or launched. Some owners are companies or multinational bodies, and CIS stands for the former Soviet states, mostly Russia.
• 571 active payloads have no entry in CelesTrak's active orbit list (mostly objects with no current public elements, or orbiting beyond Earth), so they are counted here but not on the globe.
• Orbit class is read from the current apogee and perigee, not from the intended orbit; a satellite being lowered to decay is still classed as LEO.

Releases and revisions

• SATCAT file timestamp Thu, 08 Oct 2026 18:38:23 GMT; the orbit list was current as of 2026 Oct 08 18:38:42 UTC. CelesTrak updates the catalog once or twice a day and orbit data every two hours; this page does not refresh itself.
• Next: re-run space_satellites.py to refresh. It downloads each CelesTrak file once and stops on any reply other than HTTP 200, as CelesTrak's usage policy asks.