What orbits are satellites in?
Active satellites are spread across 7 orbit classes, and one of them holds nearly all of them.
Catalog as of 2026-08-15 12:30 UTC · page generated 2026-08-22
The catalog has not refreshed in over 48 hours, so this figure is older than it should be.
The breakdown
Active satellites
- LEO11,735
- SSO3,618
- GEO588
- VLEO199
- MEO185
- HEO46
- UNKNOWN1
What this number is not
- Orbit class is derived from the current elements, so a satellite raising or lowering its orbit can move between classes.
- Sun-synchronous orbits are counted separately from low Earth orbit here, even though they are a kind of low Earth orbit.
How it is computed, and how it is checked
Active payloads grouped by orbit class, which is derived from the current element set rather than declared.
The grouping runs here, in one pass over every matching row, so there is no second route to this figure that a page render can afford. What is checked is that the read was complete: Postgres counts the matching rows itself, and that is compared against the number of rows actually read. A truncated or capped read withholds the figure. The headline is not independently recomputed, and the page does not claim it is.
Read check today: Postgres counts 16,372 matching rows, and 16,372 were read and grouped here, so nothing was dropped or truncated. The headline itself is not recomputed by a second route.
Where the underlying data comes from is on the methodology page, field by field on sources.
Cite this
OrbitalWiki (2026). What orbits are satellites in? Retrieved 2026-08-22 from https://www.orbitalwiki.com/statistics/satellites-by-orbitThe retrieval date matters: this number changes every six hours.