How Many Satellites Are in Orbit Right Now?
There are 16,612 active satellites in Earth orbit right now, according to the live count at the top of this page, which was last refreshed on October 7, 2026. An active satellite is one that is still working or held as a working spare. Dead satellites, spent rocket stages and debris are not included.
There is no single official number, because every catalogue decides slightly differently when a satellite counts as working. The main independent counts all agree on the size, though: between about 16,000 and 17,000 working satellites in autumn 2026.
| Source | Count | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
| SatFleet Live (live) | 16,612 | Satellites on CelesTrak's active list plus launches from the last 30 days, with orbits from Space-Track |
| Jonathan McDowell | 16,913 | Working satellites in orbit, 30 September 2026 |
| Jonathan McDowell | 20,008 | All satellites in orbit, working or dead, 30 September 2026 |
The SatFleet Live figure updates automatically. The other figures are fixed snapshots with the date shown.
How Many of Them Are Starlink?
11,139 active satellites, about 67% of everything working in orbit, belong to SpaceX's Starlink network. No other operator comes close. Starlink alone has more active satellites than every other company, agency and military in the world combined.
Starlink is not the only internet constellation, just the biggest. Another 1,580 satellites belong to other broadband networks: Eutelsat's OneWeb, Amazon's Kuiper (now sold as Amazon Leo), China's Qianfan and Guowang, SES's O3b, Russia's Rassvet and AST SpaceMobile, which beams internet straight to phones. Together, internet satellites make up more than three quarters of all active satellites. For launch numbers and how to spot them, see our guide to Starlink satellites.
Satellites by Type
Here is what the satellites in orbit right now are used for. Each satellite is sorted by its name into the same groups you can switch on and off in the SatFleet Live map.
Live data, last updated October 7, 2026. "Other / unidentified" includes satellites launched in the last few weeks that do not have an official name yet.
Outside the internet constellations, the largest groups are communications satellites, mostly large geostationary satellites for television, phone and data relay, and Earth observation satellites that photograph the planet or scan it with radar. Navigation satellites are few, 195 in total, but they power every GPS, Galileo, GLONASS and BeiDou receiver on Earth.
How Many Satellites Are in Each Orbit?
15,799 active satellites, 95% of the total, fly in low Earth orbit (LEO), less than 2,000 km above the ground. Being close lets internet satellites respond quickly and lets imaging satellites take sharp photos, but each one only covers a small area, so networks need thousands of them.
Geostationary satellites orbit at exactly the speed Earth turns, so each one stays above the same spot on the equator. That is why a satellite TV dish never has to move. To learn how each type of orbit works, read how satellite orbits work.
When Were Today's Satellites Launched?
Most satellites in orbit today are very new: 84% of them were launched in the last five years. The chart shows when the satellites that are active right now were launched. Satellites launched in earlier years that have since stopped working or burned up are not included.
Live data. Low Earth orbit internet satellites are designed to last about five years and are then steered down to burn up, which is why so few older ones remain.
The oldest satellite on today's active list is Calsphere 1, a passive aluminium sphere launched in 1964 to help calibrate radars, which reflects radar signals but has no electronics. Among satellites that still transmit, the amateur radio satellite AMSAT-OSCAR 7, launched in 1974, is usually cited as the oldest.
How Fast Is the Number of Satellites Growing?
The number of working satellites has grown more than sevenfold since 2019. For six decades the total grew slowly. Then the internet constellations started launching in batches of dozens at a time.
Sources: Union of Concerned Scientists Satellite Database (2019 to 2023; its updates are paused) and Jonathan McDowell (2026).
The pace is still increasing. According to the ESA Space Environment Report 2026, more than 300 launches in 2025 put over 4,000 new satellites into orbit, roughly ten a day, while more than three intact satellites or rocket bodies fall back into the atmosphere every day. So far, 3,169 satellites launched in 2026 are active in orbit.
Which Country Has the Most Satellites?
The United States operates by far the most satellites, almost entirely because of Starlink (11,139 active satellites) plus Amazon's Kuiper network (391 active satellites on October 7, 2026). Without Starlink, the gap with the rest of the world would be much smaller.
China is the fastest-growing challenger. Its two internet constellations, Qianfan and Guowang, are being deployed in large batches, on top of its BeiDou navigation network, its Yaogan military satellites and a fast-growing range of Earth observation satellites. Europe follows through national satellites, ESA and companies such as Eutelsat and SES.
Active satellites by owner, live
| # | Country or organization | Active satellites | Share |
|---|
Owner as recorded in the US Space Force catalogue (Space-Track.org). Some satellites are listed under international organizations, such as ESA or Intelsat, instead of a country. Last updated: October 7, 2026.
Dead Satellites and Space Debris
Working satellites are only about half of the large objects tracked in orbit. On 30 September 2026, Jonathan McDowell's catalogue also counted:
- About 3,100 dead satellites still in orbit
- 2,068 spent rocket stages
- 11,166 pieces of catalogued debris, including 2,656 from anti-satellite missile tests
- 34,758 tracked objects in total, weighing about 17,900 tonnes
The SatFleet Live debris layer is following 0 pieces of debris and rocket bodies right now: 0 fragments and 0 spent rocket stages.
Those are only the objects big enough to track, roughly 10 cm and larger in low orbit. ESA's statistical models estimate more than a million fragments between 1 and 10 cm and well over 100 million smaller than 1 cm. Even a 1 cm fragment hits with the energy of a hand grenade at orbital speed. If collisions start creating debris faster than it falls back to Earth, some orbits could become unusable, a risk known as the Kessler syndrome. Read more in our guide to space debris.
How the Live Count Works
Every two hours, the SatFleet Live server downloads the latest orbits of every satellite from Space-Track.org, the US Space Force catalogue. It keeps the satellites that CelesTrak lists as active, plus satellites launched in the last 30 days that have not been added to that list yet. That set is exactly what the live map shows.
The server then counts them by type, orbit, launch year and owner, and this page loads that summary each time you open it. If the live data cannot be loaded, the page shows the last count checked by our team, with its date. Types are worked out from each satellite's official name, so a satellite with an unusual name can occasionally land in the wrong group. We review the groups regularly.