Jonathan's Space Report | Space Statistics

Constellation List

I consider constellations with N > 50 planned satellites as 'Large' and N > 1000 as 'Enormous'.

Each enormous (expected N > 1000 ) planned constellation is listed here. The tables show:

Layer: An 'element number' (1,2,...) or `layer'. These correspond to the shells defined in FCC or ITU filings. Each layer corresponds to a shell of satellites at a given nominal altitude and inclination, with a given number of orbital planes and a target number of satellites per plane.
SubShell: A 'sub-shell number' ( 0,1,2,..). In practice, for the constellations deployed to date, the shells of satellites do not necessarily correspond exactly to the FCC/ITU filings. For each layer, sub-shell 0 is the shell defined by the official filing. Sub-shells 1,2, etc are well-defined shells of launched satellites which appear to be associated with the layer but have slightly different orbital parameters from the nominal ones. There can be many sub-shells for a single layer, as in the case of OneWeb.
LayerName: Descriptive name, if any, usually from FCC filing
SimLayer: A `simulation layer code' (A,B,C, etc.). These are arbitrary designations assigned by me to group the constellation shells in my simulations. You can ignore this value.
Altitude: The altitude of the sub-shell is given in km
Inclination: The inclination of the sub-shell to the equator is given in degrees.
No of Planes: For each official layer (so, sub-shell 0 only) the number of orbital planes for the nominal shell is given.
Sats Per Plane: For each official layer (so, sub-shell 0 only) the number of satellites per plane for the nominal shell is given.
Sats on Stn In Subshell: The number of satellites currently 'on station', in the sub-shell at the given altitude.
Sats on Stn in Layer: The actual number of satellites currently in the layer. This number is the sum the number in all the sub-shells.
Sats off Stn: Sats associated with this layer, but not currently at the operational altitude (either in ascent phase, retirement/descent phase, or held at non standard altitude for debugging or relocation)
Total Sats up for layer: For each official layer, the total actual number of satellites currently in orbit - the sum of the previous two values, both in one of the subshells or originally intended to be in that layer.
Total Sats Planned: For each official layer, the total planned number of satellites is given - this is just the product of (No of Planes) and (Sats per Plane).

Note: Statements by Greg Wyler of E-Space and others indicate that they do not in fact actually intend to build and deploy the very large number of proposed satellites registered with the ITU by E-Space (Semaphore and Cinnamon constellations). Nevertheless the ITU filings exist and, as far as I know, have not been retracted.

21 : Total planned constellations
555127 : Total planned satellites
10 : Total constellations with at least one launched sat
7509 : Total launched sats in all constellations
6657 : Total launched sats in constellation operational shells

Data last updated: 2024 Nov 22 00:42:39

Data on this page are licensed CC-BY. You are free to reuse them but please credit 'Jonathan McDowell, https://planet4589.org' or similar.

Jonathan's Space Pages

Enormous (`Mega') Satellite Constellations

Constellation List