Starlink Statistics
Computed live from the current constellation TLEs (SGP4).
Every figure below is derived from the same orbital data that drives the live globe — not a static table. We take each satellite's current orbital elements, propagate them with the SGP4 model, and read off altitude and inclination to build these distributions on the fly, so they track the real constellation as it grows and re-shells.
Starlink is not one uniform swarm: it is organised into orbital "shells" at set altitudes and inclinations, which is why the altitude and inclination charts cluster into distinct bands rather than spreading evenly. For why inclination decides who gets coverage, see Starlink's orbital shells explained.
Altitude distribution
Satellites grouped by current altitude (km).
Orbital shells
Satellites grouped by orbital inclination.
Constellation growth
Satellites currently in orbit, by launch year.
Active satellites over time
Daily snapshots of the tracked constellation.
Reading the altitude distribution
The altitude chart does not look like a bell curve, and it should not. Starlink is organised into orbital shells — groups of satellites assigned to specific altitudes and inclinations — so altitude clusters into bands with sparse gaps between them. Right now the 450–500 km band holds about 86% of the tracked constellation.
The interesting part is the low end. About 9% of satellites currently sit below 450 km, well under the main operational shells. Those are not a separate shell. They are a mix of two populations moving in opposite directions: freshly launched batches released into a low parking orbit and climbing to their assigned altitude on ion thrusters, and older satellites being deliberately deorbited at the end of their service life.
That group is the constellation's replacement cycle, visible as a single snapshot. With a design life of roughly five years, a large share of every year's launches is replacement rather than growth — the guide on satellite lifespan works through why that number is deliberate.
Reading the inclination distribution
Inclination is the angle between a satellite's orbital plane and the equator, and it has one consequence that dominates everything else: it sets the maximum latitude the satellite ever reaches. A satellite at 53° inclination never travels north of 53° N or south of 53° S.
That is why this chart is spiky rather than smooth, and why the 53° band carries roughly 47% of the constellation — it covers the latitudes where most of the world's population lives. The 19% sitting in the 70° and 97°+ bands exists for a different job entirely: those shells reach the high latitudes the main ones cannot serve well, which is what makes Starlink work in northern Canada, Scandinavia, Alaska and at Antarctic research stations.
If you want to know why your own location gets the pass geometry it does, this chart is the answer. Compare it with how many satellites are above you right now.
Reading the growth chart
The launch-year chart counts satellites currently in orbit by the year they went up — not the number launched that year. Those are different figures, and the gap between them is the story.
Early years look thin because most of those satellites have already been retired, not because few were launched. The 2024–2026 cohort accounts for about 63% of what is currently tracked, which is what a constellation with a five-year hardware life looks like from the outside: the front of the distribution is always the largest, and the back end erodes continuously.
It also means the constellation gets more capable without necessarily growing in headcount. Each generation carries substantially more usable bandwidth than the one it replaces, so a flat satellite count can still represent a large increase in network capacity — see the guide to Starlink hardware generations.
How these figures are produced
Nothing here is a stored table. Every number on this page is computed at request time from the constellation's current orbital elements: each satellite's two-line element set is propagated with the SGP4 model to get its position now, and altitude and inclination are read from that result.
A small number of element sets make SGP4 diverge and report implausible altitudes — thousands of kilometres for an object plainly in low orbit. Those are filtered out before the statistics are computed, because a handful of bad values would visibly skew the average, minimum and maximum. That is a real property of the data rather than a presentation choice, and the guide on how satellite tracking works explains why element sets degrade.
The count also reflects what is in the public catalogue, which is not identical to what SpaceX considers operational. Satellites still raising their orbits, satellites being deorbited, and satellites that have failed but not yet re-entered are all tracked objects. Read the figure as “Starlink objects currently in orbit” rather than “satellites currently serving customers”.