Today, we released a new version of the UCS Satellite Database. This version of the database includes satellites launched through December 31, 2011. The database currently contains 994 actively working satellites.
Since the previous quarterly update of the Database, we have added 53 satellites, including 5 satellites we returned to active status in the database upon receiving new information, and deleted 33 satellites from active status. We are closing in on 1,000 active satellites.
The graph below shows the change in the total number of active satellites in the UCS Database with each update since we first posted it in 2006.
Jonathan McDowell of Jonathan’s Space Report recently plotted his tally of active satellites since 1957. Because we define “active” status for satellites in slightly different ways, Jonathan’s numbers are generally about 5% higher than ours:
