Every satellite orbiting earth and who owns them (2023)

It's incredible how many satellites Space X have launched

It's also surprising from a layman's perspective the "freedom" to launch rockets into space without necessarily needing permission, the originating country of course needs to approve it but none else

> "Earth has 4550 satellites in orbit"

Rapidly obsoleted information. SpaceX alone has > 7500 satellites in orbit. It added 2,300+ satellites in the one year period ending Jun 2025.

Is there something like https://www.flightradar24.com for satellites?

Would be kind of interesting to build a “live” visualization of objects in earths orbit. But this would require accurate live data of those objects. Probably nothing that companies would publish.

On the other hand side: once the object and its orbit is identified, positions could be calculated…

Does anyone know more?

> Did you know that we provide flexible and robust data acquisition hardware and software that can be used for testing satellites, rockets, airplanes, or helicopters in the air, in space, or on the ground? Our solutions are used and trusted by leading aerospace companies. Contact us to learn more.

Interesting article for a sales pitch. Nicely done.

For anyone interested in current data like this, Jonathan McDowell maintains GCAT which is a General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects (and does so fastidiously).

https://www.planet4589.org/space/gcat/index.html

Be warned if you planning to ingest this dataset, the dates are fun =)

Here's a related long-form article with more recent figures (and narratives),

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/07/23/world/asia/st... ("This Was Supposed to Be the Year China Started Catching Up With SpaceX")

It's interesting that the "E" in GEO, LEO, MEO, HEO is short for three different things: https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Ty...

The article may be from 2023, but the data is for 2021.

At the rate of Space X littering the sky with them, the 2021 statistics are somewhat irrelevant.

Unfortunately, not relevant anymore. Some information is from before 2021 on this page.

Pretty wild to think that over a third of all the satellites orbiting Earth belong to one private company. Space used to feel like the domain of governments and sci-fi

Does that mean that the entire EU has no military satellites at all? (Or maybe like 10 from France's CNES, and that's it?)

Stats that are based only on the number of satellites can be very misleading as they don't differentiate between a 5 ton comm sat and an 1 kg cubesat.

Poland have 10-20 satelites 2 army and many optical satelites , bocian, heveliusz, etc.

I would have to suspect there are more US NRO ones that aren't listed. Misty and her descendants would like a word.

It would also be interesting to learn more about launch locations and how countries near the equator can benefit from this booming sector.

Dewesoft is only ranking the top 50 owners, so their stats may be wrong or misleading for the others.

Austria, for example, is listed as having only 1 satellite, but they have at least 4 according to the UCS Satellite Database.

So about 11000 units in the low orbit in 2025 and thats a mix of commercial and state satellites. I wonder how the traffic and distribution being governed

*that we know of

Off-topic but wow, what a nice, concise and no-bullshit cookie banner. I wish everyone's cookie banner was like this, the web would have been a better place! Seriously.

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