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Data

Tracked objects in low Earth orbit, by type

See all data and research on:
Space Exploration & Satellites

What you should know about this indicator

  • is defined by a point of closest approach to Earth below 2,000 kilometers.
  • Debris are assigned to the launch date of the original object from which they were separated.
Tracked objects in low Earth orbit, by type
Objects are subtracted from the time series after they have reentered the Earth's atmosphere. Not all objects are tracked: in 2021, the European Space Agency estimated there were more than 130 million space debris objects larger than 1 millimeter.
Source
United States Space Force (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
March 4, 2025
Next expected update
March 2026
Date range
1958–2024
Unit
objects

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

This dataset is extracted from Space-Track.org, a website maintained by the 18th Space Defense Squadron of the United States Space Force.

The original data includes information on thousands of space objects tracked over time, including their launch date and decay date (if they have reentered the Earth's atmosphere).

Retrieved on
April 3, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.space-track.org/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
United States Space Force - Number of objects in space (2025). 18th Space Defense Squadron.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Tracked objects in low Earth orbit, by type”, part of the following publication: Edouard Mathieu, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser (2022) - “Space Exploration and Satellites”. Data adapted from United States Space Force. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/low-earth-orbits-objects [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

United States Space Force (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

United States Space Force (2025) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Tracked objects in low Earth orbit, by type” [dataset]. United States Space Force, “Number of objects in space” [original data]. Retrieved March 10, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/low-earth-orbits-objects