More than ten thousand working satellites now circle the Earth, and the number grows every week. Most fly in low Earth orbit, below 2,000 km, where they go around in about an hour and a half: internet constellations such as Starlink, Earth-observation satellites and space stations. Navigation satellites such as GPS fly much higher, around 20,000 km, and television and weather satellites hover 35,786 km above the equator. The counts on this page come from CelesTrak’s list of active satellites, refreshed several times a day; they leave out the debris and spent rocket stages that are also tracked.
How many satellites are orbiting the Earth?
Computing…
Questions and answers
Which country has the most satellites?
The United States, by far, mostly because of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation; the live table on this page ranks countries and organisations.
Does this include space junk?
No: only active satellites. Tens of thousands of pieces of debris larger than a few centimetres are tracked as well.
Where the numbers come from
Values refresh every second in your browser; the published data are checked every 10 minutes and updated several times a day.