Active satellites in orbit jump 29% in a year, Look Up barometer finds

Nearly 17,000 active satellites now orbit Earth, up 29% from a year ago, per the Look Up x Le Point Space Barometer. Starlink alone accounts for nearly two-thirds of the total, while China's fleet grew 26% to 1,434 satellites. The rapid expansion is reshaping the orbital environment and raising stakes for space domain awareness.

Bottom line — 16,819 active satellites are now in orbit, with 4,737 launched in the past year.

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• Starlink operates 11,041 active satellites, up 34% from a year ago, and around 640 of those are dedicated to its Direct to Cell service, per the Space Barometer.
• China now operates 1,434 active satellites, driven by large low-Earth-orbit constellations and increasingly advanced in-orbit manoeuvring, the report notes.
• Over the past year, 1,412 objects were deorbited, including 914 satellites, 507 of them Starlink craft, reflecting the constellation's continuous renewal, according to Look Up.
• In late August, the Chinese Yaogan 50-02 satellite broke apart at roughly 960 km, generating 42 new pieces of catalogued debris, the Space Barometer reports.
• Look Up CEO Michel Friedling said: 'We are no longer simply facing an increase in the number of satellites, but a profound transformation of the orbital environment.'
• The U.S. Space Force has selected Lake Kickapoo, Texas, for the third Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability site, completing a US-UK-Australia network to track objects in geostationary orbit, per Army Recognition.
• BRICS countries are building a shared Earth remote sensing satellite system for environmental monitoring, exchanging data from Russian, Chinese, Indian, Brazilian and South African spacecraft, according to TV BRICS.

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