Jonathan's Space Pages

Historical TLE Orbital Elements

Updated Apr 2022: note that I have made a significant number of corrections to cross-tagging errors. For example when I have determined that a TLE ostensibly for one object A is really for another object B, I have moved the TLE to the file for object B.

I have added documentation for the extended TLE (XTLE) formats used in these data: XTLE FORMAT DEFINITION.

Note: The only further updates to the element database will be made from hobbyist data, public sources and my own guesstimates, since as of the early 2000s USAF Space Command is now restricting redistribution of US government orbital data. All the TLE data on this site originating from US government sources was obtained from other public sources, or else from the GSFC OIG site under agreements that did not restrict redistribution of the data. More recent data may be obtained from Space-Track.org and Celestrak.


Data from the Russian Vympel web site spacedata.vimpel.ru are also excluded in accordance with the restrictions noted on their website.


This database is useful for historical analysis, but does not contain recent element sets and so cannot be used for predictions.

Each link is to a directory with TLE files for 100 satellite catalog numbers.