[HN Gopher] Every satellite orbiting earth and who owns them (2023)
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Every satellite orbiting earth and who owns them (2023)
Author : jonbaer
Score : 249 points
Date : 2025-08-01 05:31 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dewesoft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dewesoft.com)
| theyinwhy wrote:
| Unfortunately, not relevant anymore. Some information is from
| before 2021 on this page.
| NoPicklez wrote:
| 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
| 9dev wrote:
| The UN would be the obvious entity that comes closest to a
| world government, but with people like the clown in the White
| House in charge, it would be a hopeless endeavour to even
| propose to let them take care of the orbit.
|
| At some point regulation will be necessary, or accidents will
| happen; the way the world is heading, it's probably going to be
| accidents.
| MindSpunk wrote:
| The only countries even capable of enforcing launch bans
| stand to gain nothing from them because it just makes
| launching their own payloads more difficult. There's like ~10
| or so countries who are readily launch capable and even less
| with the military capability to put any pressure to stop
| foreign launches.
|
| Who's going to regulate? Regulation only works when someone
| has the power to enforce them. Right now the people with that
| power aren't the most agreeable. And flexing it is either
| antagonizing western allies or a declaration of war.
| pyman wrote:
| Unfortunately, there's no real way to regulate this. I used
| to worry about space junk and companies polluting space,
| but now I'm more concerned about what's inside those
| satellites. With no regulations in place, they can put
| pretty much anything up there.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if a few of those satellites had
| nuclear weapons inside (or maybe that's just me being
| paranoid.) Still, having satellites that can take out other
| satellites during a conflict is definitely a possibility.
| Which brings me back to my original concern: space junk.
| The last thing we need is a graveyard of satellites
| floating above our heads.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| International cooperation can still work even though there
| is very rarely a realistic prospect of enforcement. No one
| is going to war to enforce WTO rulings or nuclear non-
| proliferation treaties, for example.
|
| It's true that when things get really hairy international
| law tends to fall by the wayside, eg countries leaving the
| Land Mine Ban Treaty now that it seems possible they may
| actually have to deal with a foreign invader on their soil.
| But they can still be effective at regulating states'
| behaviour in more peaceful times, which is still useful.
|
| But it _does_ require the major powers to be willing (i) to
| talk to each other, and (ii) to think about the world
| beyond their own borders, which means it 's unlikely to
| happen given the current leadership in certain of the big
| space-going nations.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| A country was last bombed in an attempt to enforce the
| NPT less than two months ago.
|
| And of the conditions you listed, you missed the big one.
| The big, powerful countries must directly benefit, they
| have never signed up to a treaty where they don't.
| darkwater wrote:
| > Regulation only works when someone has the power to
| enforce them.
|
| And this is why we cannot have nice things
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > Who's going to regulate?
|
| I will; when I am elected God-Emperor, I will set up a
| global defense network that will shoot down any
| unauthorised launches. I will also build a space palace,
| because I can.
|
| Only half-joking; space will be regulated when one force
| becomes dominant and individual countries' rights are taken
| away, OR when the majority of countries, but specifically
| the biggest and most powerful ones, get to an agreement -
| but given the significant differences between e.g. the US,
| China, India and Russia, that's unlikely to happen anytime
| soon. So at the moment, a globally dominant world power
| setting the rules will be the likely candidate.
|
| But first, there needs to be a tipping point of sorts, a
| line that is crossed. That'll either be space-based weapons
| or missile defense systems, or simply being out-competed.
| It'll be at least another decade plus billions of
| investments before any other nation or company can start to
| compete with SpaceX's launch capacity, and they haven't
| stopped yet; if Spaceship becomes viable they and the US
| will have a huge lead, and the launch capability to set up
| a global missile detection / defense / space offense
| network.
| metalman wrote:
| wrong. NK as an example has the capacity to design and
| deliver and deploy load after load after load of small
| rusty ball bearings into random low earth orbits, leaving
| existing geo syncronous satelites as the only platforms
| operating in earths orbit, SK, Japan, France, etc ,etc,
| etc,....russia, china,.......many large industrial
| companies(mitsu, hiundi, various name shify US
| companies)..... can just shut the whole thing down long
| before any emperor starts issueing edicts from orbit.
| this is the classic example of where the "defence" is
| orders of magnitude easier and cheaper than the "offence"
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > NK as an example has the capacity to design and deliver
| and deploy load after load after load of small rusty ball
| bearings into random low earth orbits
|
| Funny that the only country that actually did that was
| the US...
| hopelite wrote:
| The UN is fundamentally and terminally flawed and always has
| been from the very beginning as ruse for what has always been
| a facade of "America's" control of the world.
|
| It is why the UN lair is right on the East River, a
| proverbial stone's throw away from Wall Street, Madison Ave,
| and Broad Street in the heart of the American Empire of world
| domination.
| N19PEDL2 wrote:
| Permission granted by whom? Agencies and companies that launch
| satellites are subject only to the laws of the countries in
| which they are based. And it is not even imaginable to have a
| NPT-like system where a few "special" countries have the right
| to launch satellites while the others don't.
| mhio wrote:
| That generally falls to the International Telecommunication
| Union globally, as a satellite without a radio is basically
| junk.
|
| Then maybe the 4(+) countries that can field anti sat weapons
| beyond that.
| pc86 wrote:
| I understand you may want it to fall to the UN, but to the
| extent that it does it is merely a courtesy.
|
| If someone wants to launch satellites with a radio
| violating every ITU regulation there is, unless someone is
| going to knock on their door with a gun, it doesn't mean
| squat. The buck stops at your nation's capital - if they're
| okay with what you're doing, you can do it. Everything else
| is just diplomatic window dressing and doesn't really mean
| anything at the end of the day.
| KurSix wrote:
| Yeah, it's kind of mind-blowing how much the space game has
| shifted from international diplomacy to private enterprise with
| a launch schedule
| pyman wrote:
| I agree. I wonder if handing things over to private companies
| is a way for governments to avoid red tape and shift
| accountability if something goes wrong.
| numpad0 wrote:
| There are only like half a dozen countries capable of doing
| orbital launches. That number is smaller than those nuclear
| capable.
| zugi wrote:
| It's really not all that surprising that space is treated like
| the oceans. There certainly are rules and norms of behavior,
| but you don't need to ask for permission to enter it.
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| At this point I'd like to make the case that, shall we say,
| 'selfish' actors are indeed a problem on the oceans, for
| example in the form of fishing vessels that invade the
| fishing grounds of other peoples and foreign nations and are
| not held accountable by anyone to any kind of standard in
| terms of ecosystem impact, overfishing and so on.
|
| It's a genuinely international problem that can hardly be
| solved by throwing up one's hands and sighing that the oceans
| are free for everyone and ergo there's nothing that can be
| done. I believe one could convince a lot of people that there
| should be limits, I just have to scale up bad behaviors:
| fishing a species to extinction? pouring toxic waste into the
| waters? using dynamite for fishing? scraping ocean floors for
| minerals and turning thriving ecosystems into vast lifeless
| deserts? huge dragnets that catch and kill everything? Some
| of these things may not resonate with all people but almost
| everyone will answer Yes, that should not be allowed, at some
| point.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| That's... good? In more ways than one.
|
| The most obvious is that any international body would be easily
| controlled by the big players, so you'd end up with more
| centralized control by the same national entities, but now
| they'd be controlling other countries launches as well.
|
| The other problem is that lately international organizations
| have a pretty bad track record. Two examples, which I've chosen
| because they are actually both very important incidents and
| also squarely in the domain of the respective orgs: WHO with
| Covid with a mostly useless and visibly politicized reaction;
| and UN with Gaza, with a large block of Arab voters who are
| basically stuck at condemning Israel, but systematically refuse
| to actually step up and help with the problem. Both incidents
| are literally what those orgs were created to handle, and yet
| they don't.
|
| Also space launches have a military component, not always
| public. I doubt many would agree to let an international body
| poke their nose in that.
| Yokolos wrote:
| Somebody has never heard of the tragedy of the commons.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
|
| > The tragedy of the commons is the concept that, if many
| people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable
| resource, such as a pasture, they will tend to overuse it and
| may end up destroying its value altogether. Even if some
| users exercised voluntary restraint, the other users would
| merely replace them, the predictable result being a "tragedy"
| for all.
|
| There is no right of absolute freedom, because at some point
| that freedom affects other people who also have rights. So
| we're always limited explicitly and implicitly in what we can
| do. Free, unfettered access just means taking something away
| from somebody else.
| tlb wrote:
| Space is the one resource that isn't finite. And even in
| LEO, the amount of space is huge. It's about the same
| surface area of the earth, but tens of kilometers thick.
|
| We used to have to leave a lot of space between satellites
| because their orbits varied unpredictably, but we've gotten
| better at packing them.
|
| Someday we'll talk about the days of 5000 satellites like
| we talk about when computers had 4096 bytes of RAM, and it
| will be fine.
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| That police and justice courts don't catch every thief is not
| an argument to abolish the judiciary or make stealing legal.
| That police and judges habitually act in favor of certain
| people is likewise not an indication that a society without
| regulatory institutions is better off than one with
| admittedly flawed ones.
| pc86 wrote:
| Police and courts have legitimacy because they are created
| by the sovereign nation. There is no sovereign entity above
| the nation - you're comparing apples and hammers.
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| If nations have legitimacy then they can enter into
| supra-/international bodies and agreements with
| legitimacy much like two persons can agree on an arbiter
| to resolve differences in their mutual contracts. This is
| nothing new and we've been doing it for a long time--the
| Egyptian 18th dynasty entered into the first known peace
| treaty with a foreign nation 1500 years BCE; NATO and the
| United Nations are modern examples. The US, of course, is
| a country that has been notoriously difficult to get into
| international agreements (Paris/Kyoto, WHO, ICC).
| pc86 wrote:
| Those international bodies and agreements only have
| legitimacy because nations agree that they do.
|
| To take a slightly different take, Mexico exists as an
| objective fact. The EU can decide not to recognize Mexico
| as a country but Mexico continues to exist and faces
| basically no adverse reaction from this. If the countries
| that make up the EU decided it was done and stopped
| acknowledging it, it would cease to exist. It has no
| population, no military, no land. No means of projecting
| force. Mexico retains these properties and abilities
| regardless of any agreements to the contrary, or lack
| thereof.
|
| I'm not saying international agreements don't exist but
| that they have no inherent sovereignty because they are
| by definition but hand-shake agreements between
| independent sovereign members.
| squigz wrote:
| And what do you think the downsides to unregulated space
| launches might be, particularly as commercial launches become
| more commonly viable?
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| If we aren't careful with space debris [1], deorbit protocols
| [2], and anti-satellite weapons [3], we risk triggering a
| Kessler syndrome [4] and permanently blocking our access to
| space. We currently have no international space agreements
| outside of not putting nuclear weapons in space, which is
| wholly inadequate for managing the dangers and safety of
| space development.
|
| The only reason space has been managed decently well until
| now is because most of it was done through the US and Europe
| that have very strict regulations around safety. Don't expect
| this good behaviour to continue.
|
| 1. https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/04/30/station
| -m...
|
| 2. https://www.livescience.com/chinese-rocket-booster-fourth-
| la...
|
| 3. https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2007-03/chinese-satellite-
| de...
|
| 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
| bayindirh wrote:
| > Don't expect this good behaviour to continue.
|
| I don't agree. Kessler syndrome is another M.A.D. scenario.
| Nobody would want it to poison the well for everyone incl.
| themselves.
| macNchz wrote:
| There are basically countless examples in human history
| of disparate self-interested parties overusing a shared
| resource and failing to regulate themselves until that
| resource becomes unusable for everyone involved, from the
| most micro scale office fridge scenario through to global
| scale like ocean overfishing and carbon emissions. I
| don't see how polluting orbital space is much different
| than polluting our water, soil, and air.
| hopelite wrote:
| The fact that the well is constantly being poisoned would
| belie that fact.
| wongarsu wrote:
| By that same reasoning everyone should be doing their
| best to avoid runaway climate change, yet here we are.
| The tragedy of the commons is tragic.
|
| Things are more civilized in space, maybe in part because
| of the relatively small number of big players. But at the
| same time there are tentative signs that we might be in
| the early stages of Kessler syndrome. It's hard to tell,
| and by the time we can tell with certainty it might be
| hard to still act in time
| bayindirh wrote:
| I think the difference is "perceived cost of the
| catastrophe". Many parties believe or choose to believe
| that all the damage done can be reversed, or it can't be
| that bad (which is _very wrong_ , BTW) or, I'll die
| anyway, who cares.
|
| For space, this perceived cost might be higher so, the
| limited number of parties might be more cautious.
|
| Indeed I'm aware of The Tragedy of Commons, but from my
| view, space is a bit more nuanced.
|
| Wish we were much more diligent about our planet though.
| We, humans, pillage it like all resources are infinite.
| Sad.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't think it really is MAD; for example in a war (I
| mention this because the comment a couple up talks about
| anti-satellite weapons) where one side has a major
| satellite advantage, the other side would probably be
| tempted to kick off Kessler syndrome. It is a long term
| problem but the potentially pro-Kessler side doesn't care
| much unless they win, and it doesn't actually cause them
| major destruction until they want to go start exploring
| space again (which would probably be put on pause until
| the war is over).
|
| And, it would be really bad. But to some extent, can you
| blame them? If they are getting whacked every day by GPS
| guided bombs or drones, or they are being outsmarted by
| satellite-gathered intelligence, why should they take it?
| If we've put parts of our weapons in space, we're the
| ones weaponizing it, right?
| nilamo wrote:
| Hi my name is SpaceY and I get paid to launch other
| companies payloads. What happens once they're deployed in
| orbit is the customer's responsibility, we specialize
| only in launching.
|
| Companies don't work for the public good, or even their
| own good, most of the time. Strange that you'd expect
| that to change.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > Strange that you'd expect that to change.
|
| I don't expect companies to change. I expect government
| to regulate and oversee...
|
| What's stranger is, people calling for deregulation of
| everything despite knowing how it's gonna end up.
| ACCount36 wrote:
| Kessler syndrome is incredibly overrated.
|
| It's completely incapable of "permanently blocking access
| to space". What it's capable of is "shit up specific orbit
| groups so that you can't loiter in them for years unless
| you accept a significant collision risk".
|
| Notably, the low end of LEO is exempt, because the
| atmosphere just eats space debris there. And things like
| missions to Moon or Mars are largely unaffected - because
| they have no reason to spend years in affected orbits.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| LEO is indeed exempt (which is a great thing given that
| it's getting quite crowded up there). But we could easily
| break geostationary orbits from being viable, as they
| don't decay from atmospheric drag.
|
| In the ISS decommission report that evaluated different
| retirement plans [1] for the ISS, the suggestion to park
| the ISS in a higher orbit was evaluated but dismissed
| because raising its orbit out of LEO would increase
| collision risk to >4 years lifetime, and raising it
| further requires too much fuel.
|
| ISS is currenrly in the higher end of LEO, meaning most
| debri decay away slowly. But higher orbits are already
| hazardous, and our space development is still very small-
| scale in those orbits. "loiter around for years" is
| already at 5 years. And that's with a relatively small
| amount of development and short history. If we want to do
| space in anther 100 year without inch-thick steel armour
| on our rockets that leave earth, we need some regulation
| around this.
|
| 1. https://www.nasa.gov/faqs-the-international-space-
| station-tr...
| pwndByDeath wrote:
| Meh, orbits and nuclei are vastly different scales, I've
| tried to simulate this by making everything in space-track
| a 10km radius sphere and it was just a few starlink nudging
| each other a couple times a week.
| perihelions wrote:
| > _" The only reason space has been managed decently well
| until now is because most of it was done through the US and
| Europe that have very strict regulations around safety.
| Don't expect this good behaviour to continue."_
|
| That's a very ahistoric narrative. There's been *zero*
| regulation around space debris in either the US or Europe,
| for almost the entire space era up until now--most of it
| isn't in effect yet. Far from being "strictly regulated",
| US space operates recklessly with regards to space debris.
| One ongoing example: spent (ULA) Centaur upper stages have
| exploded in orbit in four separate incidents since 2018,
| due to ULA's negligence in correctly
| passivating/deenergizing them. Which they were never
| obligated to do anyway--not by regulation,
|
| https://spacenews.com/faa-to-complete-orbital-debris-
| upper-s... ( _" FAA to complete orbital debris upper stage
| regulations in 2025"_)
|
| The reality is that space debris is a less consequential
| problem than you'd get from reading HN; the early players
| in space could, and did, get away with being
| extraordinarily negligent.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| I think you just argued my point. These are the countries
| that have the most rules. We've effectively relied on
| NASA being very careful until recently (yet we still have
| issues of recklessness and carelessness), but that is not
| gonna fly (pun intended) going forward.
|
| > There's been _zero_ regulation around space debris in
| either the US or Europe
|
| I present to you _Project West Ford_ [1], and its
| influence on the original creation of the _Outer Space
| Treaty_. Though the wording of the treaty itself makes
| little mention of space debris explicitly, it 's indeed
| part of the treaty. But the mild wording and weak
| enforcement are insufficient to deter recklessness.
|
| - Article I - Freedom of Use and Access
|
| - Article IX - Due Regard and International Consultation
|
| - Article VI - International Responsibility
|
| - Article VII - Liability
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_West_Ford
| axus wrote:
| ITU is the big international body.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunicatio.
| ..
| energy123 wrote:
| > "freedom" to launch rockets into space without necessarily
| needing permission
|
| Space is another public commons. I will assume it will follow
| the same trajectory as other public commons. A few decades of
| abuse, leading to consequences, leading to regulations. But the
| regulations won't happen until the consequences happens.
|
| - The electromagnetic spectrum -
| https://www.britannica.com/topic/radio/The-Golden-Age-of-Ame...
|
| - Low altitude airspace - Part 107 Rule
|
| - Fisheries - UNCLOS
| DemocracyFTW2 wrote:
| What would be needed is an international organization formed by
| at least all nations that have orbital launch capabilities to
| act as an FAA of sorts for rocket launches in general and
| putting things into orbit in particular. Earth orbit, and Low
| Earth Orbit especially so, is a limited resource and the
| outlook of permanently ruining dark skies globally or turning
| the skies into a big garbage patch that could make space travel
| impossible for centuries to come (aka Kessler syndrome) is just
| too bleak to not do it carefully with sustainability in mind.
| pc86 wrote:
| Who else would approve it?
|
| The country is the atomic unit of global governance. Everything
| else is just hand-shake deals and "promises." If your country
| says you can do something, you can do it.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The more crowded orbits aren't free. You can't just put a
| geostationary satellite anywhere you want.
|
| Only the orbits that are more plentiful are free.
| pulvinar wrote:
| 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.
| perihelions wrote:
| 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"_)
| the_arun wrote:
| If you want to avoid paywall - https://archive.ph/95S2U
| keyle wrote:
| 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.
| setnone wrote:
| 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
| ethan_smith wrote:
| LEO traffic is primarily coordinated through the ITU for
| frequency allocation and conjunction alerts from the US Space
| Force's 18th Space Defense Squadron, though there's no binding
| international framework for orbital slot management.
| elephant81 wrote:
| I would have to suspect there are more US NRO ones that aren't
| listed. Misty and her descendants would like a word.
| fireflymetavrse wrote:
| 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.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| How relevant is that for orbit occupancy?
|
| A 1 unit CubeSat is 10cm3 and max 2kg / unit, occupying a
| particular location in an LEO orbit at 28,000 km/h / 17,000 mph
| doesn't want to be bumping in to anything either.
| kortilla wrote:
| Weight is irrelevant. They will all tear through anything like
| butter and break apart into thousands of pieces in a
| conjunction.
| froglets wrote:
| The amount of aluminum in a satellite matters because of the
| effect it has on the atmosphere when it burns up during
| reentry.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Just to point that we don't actually know how important it
| is.
|
| It can be completely irrelevant, or it can be something
| that must be regulated ASAP. Nobody has any idea.
|
| (Well, we have an upper bond in that current numbers are
| still not an immediate problem.)
| carlsborg wrote:
| > "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.
| stinkbeetle wrote:
| The next line after the text you quote reads "(as of
| 9/1/2021)".
| wongarsu wrote:
| Which was a very outdated number even back when this article
| was published two years ago
|
| I'm not sure what the exact number was in 2023, but according
| to [1] it was 6718 at the end of 2022. With that kind of
| growth, quoting two year old numbers isn't all that helpful
|
| 1: https://blog.ucs.org/syoung/how-many-satellites-are-in-
| space...
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| This really isn't all that much if you pause to consider it.
| For example. Lets take the larger possible number of 7500 plus
| 2,300 plus the 4,550 satellites noted up to 2021. That's a
| total of just under 15,000 satellites. Most of those are fairly
| small objects, at the most about the size of a typical mini-
| van, with most being quite a bit smaller than that.
|
| Now, all of this is spread over a three-dimensional topography
| that's much larger than the total surface area of the Earth,
| and because their orbits are, as mentioned, three-dimensionally
| occupying various altitudes, the size of the total topography
| they move through is enormously larger than just one single
| surface area in square kilometers of a single hypothetical
| sphere X km above the Earth's surface. In the least case, even
| if all existing orbital satellites were stationed at the lowest
| possible orbital altitude, that's still quite a bit bigger than
| the 509 600 000 square km of the Earth's total surface. (too
| lazy to calculate the specific increment in this moment)
|
| Across all of that, just 15,000 objects that are individually
| smaller than your average family sedan.
|
| For comparison, the island of Manhattan has approximately
| 116,000 buildings crammed into it. If you spread those more or
| less equi-distantly from each other across the whole of the
| Earth's surface, water or air, there'd still be a tremendous
| amount of empty space between them. That's nearly 10 times as
| many objects individually much larger than any human satellite,
| across a much smaller surface area than what's occupied by our
| orbital satellites.
|
| (Yes, I know we also have a shit-load of other inert junk
| zipping around up there at tens of thousands of KM per hour,
| but even if that stuff, most of which is very tiny, were
| included, we're still talking about an enormous amount of empty
| space between objects)
| ks1723 wrote:
| But apart from all the other stuff you mention, you're
| missing an important point: these things move. And unless all
| objects are synchronized (which they are not) they occupy a
| whole orbit, not only their actual volume. If two orbits
| intersect, the objects occupying those will eventually
| collide.
|
| Therefore, they occupy much more volume.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Yes. This is the idea behind Kessler Syndrome - that the
| accumulation of clutter in Earth orbit could lead to an
| "ablation cascade" as more and more things collide and more
| and more debris is created from those collisions leading to
| Earth orbit becoming too hazardous to traverse.
|
| "A 1 kg object impacting at 10 km/s, for example, is
| probably capable of catastrophically breaking up a 1,000 kg
| spacecraft if it strikes a high-density element in the
| spacecraft. In such a breakup, numerous fragments larger
| than 1 kg would be created."
| https://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/library/a-technical-
| asses...
| HPsquared wrote:
| The dimensionality of usable orbits is much less than 3.
|
| For example all the GEO satellites are positioned along a
| 1D line.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| I believe I described it badly or you misunderstood me
| then. What I was referring to in my mention of three-
| dimensionality is that the area in which all of them
| orbit isn't a single flat plane over a sphere shape. It's
| actually several flat planes layered on top of each
| other, with an obviously ever greater surface area the
| higher you go. Thus you have LEO, MEO and GEO satellites
| all sharing orbital space but at different heights so to
| speak. I'm aware that any given satellite generally flies
| along a fixed altitude (though as far as I know their
| latitude along that altitude can shift enormously)
| HPsquared wrote:
| I suppose each satellite has its orbit defined by the
| elliptical path (4 parameters). Like for GEO you can have
| many satellites in a single elliptical path.
|
| You can also probably have different satellites on
| different ellipses whose paths intersect with each other,
| but the timing is such that they never collide.
|
| I suppose it's quite complex in reality!
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| What you say is important of course, and it's what makes me
| less than sure in my assessment. It was after all more of a
| mental exercise in appreciating just how vast an area of
| space this relatively tiny quantity of objects is spread
| across.
|
| To give one further perspective example here: a single
| large bulk container ship can carry up to 8,500 car-sized
| units.
|
| This means that even if every single one of the maybe
| 15,000 satellites in orbit were the size of a car (most of
| them are much smaller actually), all together, they'd fill
| no more than the storage spaces of two bulk container ships
| with lots of room to spare at that.
|
| This, spread over a multi-layered area as vast as our
| orbital space, means that even with their constantly moving
| at incredible speeds, and all the junk out there scattered
| between the satellites themselves, there's an enormous
| amount of emptiness between it all mitigating against
| impacts being very likely or frequent at all.
|
| After all, of the 8,070 or so Starlink satellites in orbit
| right now, there's little mention of more than a few having
| been knocked out by debris in orbit. It seems that solar
| storms are their much bigger worry and cause of mishaps.
|
| As the saying goes, space is huge, sometimes more than our
| brains can easily comprehend. This applies even in the
| comparatively tiny orbital regions of it that we use daily.
| notahacker wrote:
| The mental exercise is fine for realising that satellites
| don't look as big as pictures of satellites in graphics,
| it's just missing the point that if you don't want to hit
| a 20cm x 20cm x 20cm cube _that moves at 17,500 mph and
| has slow and limited capability to adjust that movement_
| you need to allow it quite a bit more space, and be able
| to predict its movement accurately relative to yours.
| Especially if any collision means thousands of pieces of
| shrapnel that continue to move at 17500mph for decades or
| more, whilst potentially being too small to track but
| large enough to do a lot of damage.
|
| Trains take up a negligible fraction of the mileage of
| the lines they operate on and rarely cross other lines,
| but signalling is still critical.
| benjiro wrote:
| > It added 2,300+ satellites in the one year period ending Jun
| 2025.
|
| Take in account, that a lot of those are replacement sats for
| the first generations that they are deorbiting already. Do not
| quote me on this, but its a insane amount (i though it was
| around 2k) of the first generation that they are deorbiting. If
| there is a issue, its not the amount of sats in space, but more
| the insane amount of deorbiting StarLink is doing.
|
| Starlink wanted to put up insane numbers, but a lot of their
| fights contain a large percentage of replacement sats.
|
| And they are getting bigger ... v1.5 is like 300kg, the v2.0
| mini (ironic as its far from mini compared to its predecessors)
| are 800kg.
|
| So before StarLink launched 60x v1.5's but now they are doing
| 21x v2.0 Mini's per launch.
|
| The technology has been improving a lot, allowing for a lot
| more capacity per satellite. Not sure when they start launching
| v3's but those have like 3x the capacity for inner
| connects/ground stations and can go up to 1Gbit speeds
| (compared to the v2's who are again much more capable then
| multiple v1.5s).
|
| So what we are seeing is less satellites per launch but more
| capacity per sat. This year is the last year that they are
| doing mass 1.5 launches, its all now going to the v2.0 "mini"
| (so 3x less sats).
| notahacker wrote:
| Satellite constellations in LEO tend to have short design
| lives of 5 years or so, but the _net_ change in operating
| satellites since that 2021 graphic is huge: Starlink alone
| has over 8000 in orbit now (plus another 1200 deorbited). The
| later generations of Starlink are bigger, but the launch
| cadence increases...
| newfocogi wrote:
| I love checking out the Starlink launches wikipedia page
| every so often [1], which is regularly updated. Here's stats
| as of today:
|
| "As of 31 July 2025:
|
| Satellites launched: 9,314
|
| Satellites failed or deorbited: 1,237
|
| Satellites in orbit: 8,096
|
| Satellites working: 8,077
|
| Satellites operational: 7,040"
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshi
| el...
| zenmac wrote:
| Not sure if number of satellites matters so much at this point.
| As India has already demonstrated that they can launch 100s of
| them on one rocket. Which means they can very cheaply put them
| into space as needed.
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4226900/Indi...
| chrisg23 wrote:
| If you are trying to create satellite internet in low earth
| orbit (for reduced ping/latency) the satellite moves faster
| than the earth spins, and the user on the ground loses point
| to point contact. So there has to be another satellite
| already over the horizon before the first one goes out of
| view. Wiki says Starlink sats travel at about 340 miles above
| the ground.
|
| The easiest alternative to implement is having the satellites
| in a geostationary orbit so that they are always above a
| single spot. The altitude necessary for this is higher than
| 20k miles, and results in very bad ping/latency. Inmarsat is
| one of these, and I had a chance to use it in the past. It
| was slow and laggy, as the realities of physics would
| suggest.
|
| So more satellites means more potential coverage of the
| globe, or increased capacity over existing coverage regions,
| or both. It seems very important.
|
| The Indian satellites in the article weighed on average
| around 6 kilograms. A starlink satellite weighs 227 kg. You
| can put more telecom equipment in 227 kg than in 6kg. A
| better metric than #of satellites is probably total mass of
| satellites, to make broad comparisons more meaningful.
| storgaard wrote:
| 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...
| foota wrote:
| It is the most common letter, but I agree that is funny.
| perihelions wrote:
| It looks like (if I've parsed right) every one of them stands
| for "Earth", except that HEO alone can also be overloaded three
| ways (high-earth, highly-elliptical, and highly-eccentric).
|
| This is unimportant, but: a site:nasa.gov search shows all
| three "HEO" acronyms in common use, there; and even Wikipedia
| abbreviates it inconsistently across entries[0-2].
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_Earth_orbit ( _" A medium
| Earth orbit (MEO) is an Earth-centered orbit with an altitude
| above a low Earth orbit (LEO) and below a high Earth orbit
| (HEO)"_)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_elliptical_orbit ( _" A
| highly elliptical orbit (HEO) is"_)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Earth_orbit ( _" In this
| article, the non-standard abbreviation of HEO is used for high
| Earth orbit[2]"_)
|
| [edit]: I overlooked the abbreviation of "geostationary
| _equatorial_ orbit " for GEO, which brings it up to four
| different "E's"!
| N19PEDL2 wrote:
| > geostationary equatorial orbit
|
| I thought GEO stood for Geostationary Earth Orbit, since a
| geostationary orbit must be equatorial anyway. But actually
| "Earth" would also be redundant, since "Geo-" already stands
| for Earth.
| perihelions wrote:
| I understand it's both, but "equatorial" is more precise to
| distinguish it from GSO, a _non_ -equatorial
| [g]eo[s]ynchronous [o]rbit. Otherwise, they would both be
| "GEO".
| seanhunter wrote:
| The phrase "highly elliptical" is one where I know exactly
| what they mean but the more I think about it the more wrong
| it seems. It should be "Highly eccentric orbit".
|
| All shapes which satisfy {(x,y)| x^2/a^2 + y^2/b^2 = 1} for
| fixed values of a,b in R are elliptical. Something is either
| elliptical or not - it's not a matter of degree. A circle is
| just as elliptical as a more eccentric ellipse in the same
| way that a square is just as rectangular as a more elongated
| rectangle.
| throw578547 wrote:
| LEO is Low Earth Orbit
|
| MEO is Medium Earth Orbit
|
| The E is short for the same thing in this case.
|
| GEO for Geostationary and HEO for High-Eccentricity are
| interesting, though.
| seanhunter wrote:
| MEO is Middle Earth Orbit. We have to keep an eye on what
| Gandalf is up to.
| mcv wrote:
| That orbit has only really been possible since the sinking
| of Numenor. Better make use of it now that we can.
| tapland wrote:
| SubEarthOrbit for the dwarves
| seanhunter wrote:
| ...but they orbit too deep, and too greedily.
| yapyap wrote:
| Anyone having that many satellites in space is scary, a madman
| having them is insane.
| k4rli wrote:
| Madman seems better than a con-man. All those satellites for an
| unnecessary service that could never become profitable...
|
| Is this the node_modules/js ecosystem for space? 7k+ satellites
| for a service that Viasat and others can do with ~10.
| Supposedly Starlink has better ping, but as it's still unusable
| for gaming, it doesn't appear nearly as beneficial.
| ggreer wrote:
| Leaked internal documents show that last year, Starlink made
| $72M net income on $2.7B in revenue.[1] Their revenue growth
| rate is [?]90% year over year. They're spending most of that
| on expansion (paying SpaceX for more launches, manufacturing
| more/better satellites, and manufacturing terminals). If they
| wanted to, they could scale back these expenditures and rake
| in the money. But long-term, they stand to gain more if they
| spend their revenues on ways to grow their business. Their
| customer base has increased by 30% since those financial
| statements came out, so their finances are most likely in
| even better shape now.
|
| For comparison, last year Viasat had $4.3B in revenue and
| lost $1B. This year their revenue has been flat. They lost
| revenue in communication services (probably from Starlink)
| and gained revenue in military contracts.[2]
|
| 1. https://www.scribd.com/document/886692980/GI-2139325374
|
| 2. https://investors.viasat.com/static-
| files/c89c3424-4ad3-4fe2...
| mhio wrote:
| 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 =)
| KurSix wrote:
| 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
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| That was a few years ago. More like two thirds today.
| voigt wrote:
| 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?
| dobladov wrote:
| https://satellitemap.space/
| dobladov wrote:
| Another interesting site already featured on Hacker News.
|
| https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/
| croisillon wrote:
| i didn't know that one and now i'm forwarding it to
| everybody, love the streetview thing
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| https://stuffin.space also shows debree, and will show orbits
| when you click on objects.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Unlike aircraft, satellites have VERY predictable movements,
| with the occasional small maneuver.
| numpad0 wrote:
| https://www.heavens-above.com/
|
| https://www.space-track.org/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Designator
| incognito124 wrote:
| https://satellitetracker3d.com/
| account-5 wrote:
| > 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.
| AndroTux wrote:
| 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?)
| mrweasel wrote:
| Those Swedish military satellites are just kept extremely
| secret.
|
| Countries like Germany, Spain, France and Italy does have a
| number of satellites and it doesn't seem to be specified what
| they are doing. It would be weird if none of those where not
| military.
| Hilift wrote:
| Europe is a more finite geospatial target. Fewer resources
| required. France has already stated they have the capability to
| fill the gap for Ukraine for up-to-date movements along the
| 1,000+ km line. They are currently working on the next
| generation program, IRIS, with a target date of 2027.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIS%C2%B2
|
| https://europeanspaceflight.com/ariane-6-successfully-delive...
| nixass wrote:
| *that we know of
| pedromilcent wrote:
| It would also be interesting to learn more about launch locations
| and how countries near the equator can benefit from this booming
| sector.
| mojuba wrote:
| 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.
| Western0 wrote:
| Poland have 10-20 satelites 2 army and many optical satelites ,
| bocian, heveliusz, etc.
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