Since 1957 people have launched tens of thousands of objects into orbit. Most are no longer working. Watch them circle Earth, see what one collision does, and see which countries own them.
ESA Space Environment Report 2025 (data to end of 2024) and ESA MASTER model estimates. Pieces smaller than about 10 cm cannot be tracked, so their numbers are statistical estimates.
· Each dot is one real object. A globe only ever shows one side at a time, like Earth seen from space, so it turns slowly to show all of it. Drag to turn it yourself.
3D view: heights, orbit shapes and tilts are real for every catalogued object (GCAT); where each object sits around its orbit, and the orbit's direction around the equator, are illustrative because they are not in the catalogue. The Earth is drawn, not a photograph. Speeds follow real orbital physics.
Each dot stands for about 10 catalogued objects, placed at their real average altitudes from Jonathan McDowell's GCAT catalogue; positions around the orbit are illustrative. Earth and orbit heights are to scale.
In low orbit, objects travel at about 7–8 km/s. A collision between two of them happens at around 10 km/s, so even a 1 cm fragment hits with the energy of a hand grenade.
Every collision makes more fragments, which make more collisions. In 1978 NASA scientist Donald Kessler warned this could become a chain reaction that makes some orbits unusable.
In 2009 a working Iridium satellite and a dead Russian Cosmos satellite collided, creating thousands of fragments. Anti-satellite missile tests by China (2007) and Russia (2021) each added thousands more.
New rules ask satellites to leave orbit within 5 years of finishing (ESA's standard). Low orbits clean themselves slowly as thin air drags objects down; higher up, debris can stay for centuries.
Satellites still in orbit, working or not, by the country or agency that owns them. Bars also show the rocket stages and debris each country has left up there.
ISRO and Indian companies own about 112 satellites still in orbit, from navigation (NavIC) and Earth observation to communications. In 2019 India also became the fourth country to test an anti-satellite missile; its debris was low and most of it re-entered within months.