SpaceData brief
Starlink is 64.5% of every active satellite in orbit
- Active payloads in orbit
- 17,257
- Starlink share
- 64.5% (11,137)
- Five megaconstellations combined
- 73.3% (12,649)
- Share of active satellites launched since 2019
- 92%
tecntrend.com/briefs/2026-10-07/megaconstellations
Count CelesTrak's active payloads by name and five megaconstellations make up 73% of the sky; 92% were launched since 2019.
SpaceNews reports that competition for orbital slots, radio spectrum and ground resources is sharpening as the number of broadband megaconstellations climbs. Our brief counts who actually holds the sky today, using the public CelesTrak satellite catalogue.
CelesTrak lists 17,257 active payloads. Starlink alone accounts for 11,137 (64.5%), OneWeb 651, Chinese Guowang and Qianfan together 470 (213 and 257), and Amazon's Kuiper 391. Everyone else, from Earth imagers to GPS, is 4,608 (26.7%).
Age is the other story: 92% of all active satellites went up since the start of 2019. Chinese and Amazon fleets are small today but just starting deployment, so these shares will keep shifting.
Data, method and caveats
- CelesTrak SATCAT (satcat.csv), catalogue dated through launches of 2026-10-02 CelesTrak public data, attribute CelesTrak · captured 2026-10-07
- SpaceNews: Resource competition intensifies with surge in megaconstellations news report, facts only · captured 2026-10-07
- Active = SATCAT type PAY, no decay date, and operational status +, P (partial), B (backup), S (spare) or X (extended). Objects with blank or '-' status are excluded.
- Operators are identified by object-name prefix: STARLINK, ONEWEB, QIANFAN, HULIANWANG DIGUI (the catalogue's name for Guowang), and KUIPER (Amazon's Leo service). The 21 'HULIANWANG JISHU SHIYAN' test satellites and prototype tests are counted under everyone else.
- Name matching can miss satellites registered under placeholder names (e.g. 'OBJECT A') and counts demo satellites alongside production ones.
- Shares are of satellite count, not capacity or mass.
This brief as JSON or Markdown. Reuse the chart with credit to Tec N Trend and the sources above.