As per estimates, over 58% of the satellites orbiting the Earth remain active, while others are inactive.
The year 2022, so far, has witnessed the maximum number of orbital and suborbital launches. In total, 155 launches have taken place, out of which five failed and one suffered partial failures.
According to the Index of Objects Launched into Outer Space, maintained by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), there are 8261 individual satellites orbiting the Earth; an increase of 11.84% compared to April 2021.
By the end of January 2022, there were 12, 293 objects launched into the space. Moreover, there are 31 different launch facilities listed by UNOOSA, including air-based, sea-based and even submarine-based launches.
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Are all satellites orbiting in space, active?
According to UNOOSA records, there are 8,261 satellites orbiting the Earth as on January 2022, out of which only 4,852 satellites are active (as at the end of December 2021), confirmed by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), who maintains the record of the operational satellites.
According to UCS, there are 6,542 satellites, out of which 3,372 satellites are active and 3,170 satellites are inactive, as recorded by 1st January, 2021.
According to UCS:
| Number of satellites | Purpose |
| 3135 | Communications |
| 1030 | Earth Observation |
| 385 | Technology development/demonstration |
| 154 | Navigation/positioning |
| 22 | Earth science |
| 18 | Other purposes |
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Growth Drivers
The growth in the number of satellites over the last decade was mainly driven by the development of the smaller CubeSat, which allows a large number of small-sized satellites to launch at the same time, however, earlier rockets were used only to launch one or two satellites at a time.
The top 10 countries which are dominating the satellite industry are USA, China, Russia, UK, Japan, India, France, Canada, Germany and Luxembourg.
Euroconsult’s recently released report titled ‘Prospects for Space Exploration’ indicates that global space exploration is likely to touch $31 billion in the next decade.
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