This Is the Company With the Most Satellites in Orbit

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 1, 10:30AM EDT

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This Is the Company With the Most Satellites in Orbit — © isil terzioglu / iStock via Getty Images

The U.S. government has done a great deal to provide aid and weapons to Ukraine since the Russian invasion. The cost of this aid has stretched into the billions of dollars. One private sector company provides a particularly helpful service to Ukraine and its military.

Elon Musk gave out hundreds of Starlink receivers, which are part of his effort to build a broadband system that will work around the world. The Starlink system, in part built on thousands of satellites, provided Ukraine internet connectivity in a way traditional systems could not. As the receivers were delivered, the Ukraine minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, tweeted, “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.”

Satellites have been launched into orbit since the early 1960s. Some are launched for military purposes. Others are sent up by private industry for many reasons, including services as widely used as weather forecasts.

To determine the company with the most satellites, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data compiled by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit organization. Companies were ranked by the number of operational satellites in orbit as of Jan. 1, 2022, that are at least partially being used for commercial purposes.
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One example of the services these companies provide, or aim to provide, is Planet Labs’s plan. The San Francisco-based company’s eventual goal is to provide daily, high-resolution images of any area on the planet’s surface. Planet Labs operated 188 satellites as of the start of 2022, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The expense and expertise required to launch sophisticated communications satellites mean the club of the biggest satellite operators (based on the number of working satellites in orbit) is small and insular.

The company with the most satellites in orbit is SpaceX. Here are the details:

Active satellites in orbit as of 1/1/2022: 1,815
Country of operator: United States
Oldest operational satellite: Starlink-24 (launched 5/24/2019)
Newest operational satellite: Starlink-3235 (launched 12/18/2021)

Space transport company SpaceX, founded by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, has taken a strong lead in the satellite space race with its Starlink satellite internet network. In addition to its many customers, SpaceX will use its rockets to deploy satellites for its primary competitor in satellite internet service, OneWeb. Last year, SpaceX acquired Swarm Technologies, a provider of Internet of Things communications, as a wholly-owned subsidiary.

In determining the company with the satellites, only satellites that are owned and operated by a single company were considered. Government and multi-government agencies with commercial satellites were not considered. Additional data on the home country of the satellites’ operator, oldest and newest operational satellites, as well as launch dates, also came from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Note that oldest and newest active satellites were determined by launch date and that, in many cases, companies launched multiple satellites on the date noted. We did not consider any satellites launched in 2022.
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Click here to see all the companies with the most satellites in orbit.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.