Companies putting satellites in orbit rose fivefold in ten years

Claim types Fact · Interpretation

Researcher catalogue (GCAT), not a government source: Jonathan C. McDowell, General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects, statistics page 'Number of Organizations (owner/operators) with Sats Launched Per Year vs Time', data file planet4589.org/space/stats/out/nowner.txt, read live from planet4589.org through the progrss vault's publisher fetch. Licence CC BY 4.0: data from GCAT (J. McDowell, planet4589.org/space/gcat). What it measures: the number of distinct owner/operator organisations with at least one satellite (payload) launched to orbit in each year, split by GCAT organisation class: B business/commercial, C civil government, D defence/military/intelligence, A academic, amateur and non-profit (class definitions from GCAT's organisations documentation). 'Government agencies' on the chart is C + D, a derived sum. A fifth GCAT column (2 owners in 2025, 3 in 2015) is not shown on the chart but is included in the 267 and 75 totals. Values: companies 2005 12, 2015 32, 2025 167; government 2005 13, 2015 16, 2025 34; academic and non-profit 2015 24, 2025 64; all owners 2015 75, 2025 267; 2026 to late October (partial year; data file updated 26 Oct 2026) companies 170, all owners 254. 2020 dips because of the pandemic. Counting is by organisation, not by satellite: one company (SpaceX) owns most satellites launched since 2020 (see plate 029), but counts here once a year. UNOOSA's register and ESA's Space Environment Report could not be opened from this run, so no cross-check against them was possible; GCAT is used because neither publishes owners by organisation class. No claim is made about the purpose of any satellite. The last clause of the third takeaway is Interpretation.