68%
of all payloads on orbit have as their attributed State (SATCAT owner code, an evidentiary proxy) a single State — the United States (13,821 of 20,189 payloads).
One private operator (SpaceX / Starlink) accounts for 11,139 payloads ≈ two-thirds of all active satellites.
Data snapshot 2026-10-26
13,821
Attributed to the US (SATCAT owner)
11,139
Starlink payloads (SpaceX)
≈2/3
Active sats, one operator
Figures above: data snapshot 2026-10-26
Payloads on orbit per attributed State (SATCAT owner code) · snapshot 2026-10-26
Article VI OST. States Parties bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, ‘whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities’, and the activities of non-governmental entities ‘shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty’ (emphasis added). The chart shows how the public catalogue distributes payloads across attributed States: a provision drafted when a handful of States conducted space activities now sits beside a catalogue in which well over ten thousand payloads have one attributed State. The attributed State is the SATCAT owner code, used as an evidentiary proxy only — not the launching State, the State of registry, or a determination of the ‘appropriate State Party’ under Article VI (see Provenance).
The Registration Convention (art IV) requires that information be furnished to the United Nations "as soon as practicable" and sets no deadline. This panel shows how far the public registration record (UN registration documents as compiled in GCAT) currently runs behind the orbital catalogue.
A missing match is not a finding of non-compliance. An object may be registered by a different launching State (art II(2)), by an intergovernmental organisation (art VII), or following a transfer of ownership (UNGA Res 62/101); matching against GCAT's UN registration field has its own limits; and States not party to the Convention may register under UNGA Res 1721 B (XVI).
All payloads on orbit
34%
have no matching UN record in McDowell's GCAT — 6,883 of 20,189 payloads.
Data snapshot 2026-10-26
Payloads launched more than two years ago
6%
have no matching UN record — 667 of 11,613 payloads launched before 26 October 2024. Registration, where it occurs, is usually made within one to two years of launch (Ram S Jakhu, Bhupendra Jasani and Jonathan C McDowell, ‘Critical Issues Related to Registration of Space Objects and Transparency of Space Activities’ (2018) 143 Acta Astronautica 406, 409).
Rolling two-year cutoff, recomputed daily · Data snapshot 2026-10-26
Payloads with and without a matching UN record, by launch year
Matched UN record
No matching UN record
Attributed States by number of payloads on orbit
Registration Convention (1975), arts II and IV. A launching State ‘shall register the space object by means of an entry in an appropriate registry which it shall maintain’ (art II(1)), and each State of registry must furnish its particulars to the UN Secretary-General ‘as soon as practicable’ (art IV(1)); non-parties register under UNGA Res 1721 B (XVI). The registry is the foundational transparency instrument the OST architecture presupposes — fixing the State of registry, which retains jurisdiction and control under Article VIII OST, and giving Articles VI and IX a factual anchor, although the State of registry need not be the State internationally responsible under Article VI. Where it demonstrably trails the catalogue, that doctrinal machinery loses its factual anchor.
Registration ledger (accruing since 11 July 2026)
Too early to support findings; see
Section 4 for scope.
Ledger figures as at data snapshot 2026-10-26
Starlink count: data snapshot 2026-10-26 · manoeuvre count: SpaceX semi-annual report to the FCC, 1 December 2025 – 31 May 2026
Case-study library
DAILY SNAPSHOT 2026-10-26 · FETCHED 06:00Z · 35,079 CATALOGUED ON-ORBIT OBJECTS · 19,470 PROPAGATED (CELESTRAK ACTIVE SET + FOUR DEBRIS CLOUDS)
Every catalogue figure on this page is recomputed from that day's catalogue pull (case-study facts and treaty status are dated, static sources) — the totals move day to day as launches, re-entries and newly catalogued debris enter the public record. The gap between the two headline numbers is objects that are catalogued and counted but not propagated: the 3D view loads only CelesTrak’s active-satellite set and four historical debris clouds, so most other debris and rocket bodies appear in the statistics but not on the globe.
Scope — managing expectations
What this instrument demonstrates
- The scale and distribution of the tracked orbital population across attributed States (SATCAT owner code, an evidentiary proxy) — computed live from the public catalogue, never hand-drawn.
- Registration lag: the measurable share of on-orbit payloads with no matching UN record in GCAT (a per-object proxy for the UN Register).
- Registration lag as a time series: a daily ledger of how long objects remain catalogued but not yet matched to a UN record.
- Documented incident chronologies relevant to Article IX, each step traceable to the primary and secondary sources cited below (OSCOLA 5).
- Reproducibility: every catalogue-derived figure is recomputed daily by an open pipeline from cited public data; case-study facts and treaty status are dated and sourced.
What it does not do
- No operational awareness: it does not predict conjunctions, issue warnings, or substitute for SSA services.
- No real-time truth: positions are SGP4 propagations of daily element sets, carrying km-scale error.
- Historical replays use archival general-perturbations element sets from the US Space Surveillance Network — km-scale accuracy, not the operator/CDM precision on which real decisions were made. The replay of each case study is evidence of geometry and chronology, not a conjunction-assessment tool.
- No complete population: classified, untracked, and sub-10 cm objects (est. 1.2 million+ fragments ≥ 1 cm) are absent.
- No legal determinations: registration and attribution fields are evidence for analysis, not legal findings, and nothing here is legal advice.
Attribution and matching rules
The attributed State is the owner code assigned in the public satellite catalogue. It is used as an evidentiary proxy only. It is not the launching State (Liability Convention art I(c); Registration Convention art I(a)), not the State of registry (Outer Space Treaty art VIII), and not a determination of the "appropriate State Party" under Outer Space Treaty art VI, which may be more than one State.
A payload is shown as having a matching UN record when McDowell’s GCAT records a UN registration document for it (the UNReg field). A missing match is not a finding of non-compliance.
Treaty party status is taken solely from UNOOSA’s annual status document and is shown with its document symbol and ‘as at’ date wherever it appears.
Data sources
Live catalogue data are drawn from CelesTrak (GP data in OMM JSON; SATCAT in CSV). Registration matching uses Jonathan McDowell's General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects (GCAT), CC BY 4.0. Historical element sets used for incident replays are drawn from a publicly hosted mirror of Space-Track history. Earth imagery: NASA Blue Marble. Treaty status: UNOOSA.
General-perturbations element sets, derived from US Space Force 18th Space Defense Squadron (18 SDS) tracking, retrieved in OMM (JSON) format. The pipeline writes each as a two-line element set for SGP4 propagation in the browser; catalogue numbers above 99,999 are re-encoded in the Alpha-5 form for propagation only.
Retrieved 2026-10-26
Satellite catalogue (CSV): object type, owner code, launch year and on-orbit status for all 35,079 catalogued on-orbit objects. Objects without public element sets are counted in totals but not propagated in the 3D view.
Retrieved 2026-10-26
General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects (CC BY 4.0), whose per-object UN registration references (UNReg field) are used as a proxy for UN registration status.
Retrieved 2026-10-26
Earth surface texture (Blue Marble Next Generation with topography and bathymetry). Courtesy NASA Earth Observatory.
NASA Black Marble / Earth at Night
Night-lights texture on the Earth’s dark side. Courtesy NASA Earth Observatory.
Historical general-perturbations element sets from the US Space Surveillance Network, used only for the case-study event replays. Static archival data, validated at build time: propagating the final published element sets for Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 reproduces the 10 February 2009 collision to within ≈700 m at 16:55:59.8 UTC. Reproducible via pipeline/build_histevents.py.
Static · historical events do not change
‘Status of International Agreements relating to activities in outer space as at 1 January 2026’ (17 April 2026) UN Doc A/AC.105/C.2/2026/CRP.9/Rev.1. Sole source of the treaty party status shown for each attributed State (Outer Space Treaty, Liability Convention, Registration Convention). Reproducible via tools/build_treaty_status.py.
As at 1 January 2026
Legal instruments
Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (opened for signature 27 January 1967, entered into force 10 October 1967) 610 UNTS 205 (‘Outer Space Treaty’, ‘OST’).
Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects (opened for signature 29 March 1972, entered into force 1 September 1972) 961 UNTS 187 (‘Liability Convention’).
Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space (opened for signature 14 January 1975, entered into force 15 September 1976) 1023 UNTS 15 (‘Registration Convention’).
UNGA Res 1721 (XVI) B (20 December 1961) UN Doc A/RES/1721(XVI).
UNGA Res 62/101 (17 December 2007) UN Doc A/RES/62/101.
UNGA Res 77/41 (7 December 2022) UN Doc A/RES/77/41.
Case-study sources
Limitations
- TLE / SGP4 positions carry km-scale error and degrade with propagation age; this is not an operational conjunction-assessment (SSA) system.
- Untracked objects are absent from the public catalogue; classified payloads are generally listed but without public element sets, and some national-security objects are withheld altogether.
- Sub-10 cm debris is largely untrackable — ESA estimates about 1.2 million objects between 1 and 10 cm, none of which are represented here.
- UN registration follows launch after a delay. Jakhu, Jasani and McDowell found that registration, where it occurs, is usually made within one to two years of launch, although some 140 payloads were registered after a delay of ten years or more (Ram S Jakhu, Bhupendra Jasani and Jonathan C McDowell, ‘Critical Issues Related to Registration of Space Objects and Transparency of Space Activities’ (2018) 143 Acta Astronautica 406, 409). The Observatory’s registration-lag ledger records when a registration first appeared in GCAT, which reflects the State’s submission, the UN’s publication of it and GCAT’s compilation of it; it does not measure the time the State took to register. For the 812 payloads whose UN registration match first appeared in GCAT between 11 July 2026 and the current snapshot, the median interval from launch was 408 days (interquartile range 390–426 days; maximum 3,729 days). These matches come from a small number of batch submissions: as at 25 September 2026, 740 of them came from a single United States submission (UN Doc ST/SG/SER.E/1302), whose note verbale is dated 29 September 2025, about three to five months after the launches it covers; the objects were entered in the UN Register on 3 October 2025, the document is dated 23 December 2025, and the registrations first appeared in GCAT on 13 July 2026. For those payloads most of the interval therefore falls after the State’s submission. The median is not a general measure of registration lag. A payload with no matching UN record may simply not yet be matched. A missing match is not a finding of non-compliance.
- Ownership attribution follows the 18 SDS catalogue (SATCAT OWNER) convention and may differ both from the Article VI ‘appropriate State’ (typically the licensing State) and from the launching State(s) and State of registry under the Registration Convention.
- UN registration status is taken from the UN registration references recorded in McDowell’s GCAT, an unofficial secondary catalogue; it is not read directly from the UN Register and inherits GCAT’s transcription lag and any errors.
- 15,609 catalogued objects (largely inactive payloads, debris fragments and rocket bodies outside the CelesTrak groups this instrument loads) are counted in the statistics but not propagated in the 3D view.
This instrument fuses publicly available tracking and registration data with a legal-attribution overlay. It is a demonstrative evidence instrument supporting doctrinal analysis of State preventive obligations under Articles VI and IX of the Outer Space Treaty — not an operational SSA system. Author, licences and how it was made: see About.
What it is
STARS Observatory is a demonstrative evidence instrument. Each day it takes the public catalogue of objects in Earth orbit and shows the legal layer that governs them: which State the catalogue attributes each object to, whether and when a matching entry appears in the United Nations Register of Objects Launched into Outer Space, and how documented incidents unfolded in time. It exists to make the factual predicate of a legal argument observable, quantified and citable.
What it is not
It is not a space situational awareness service. Positions are propagated from public element sets and carry kilometre-scale error; the instrument does not predict conjunctions or issue warnings. It makes no legal determinations. The attributed State is the owner code in the public catalogue, used as an evidentiary proxy: it is not the launching State, the State of registry, or a finding as to the "appropriate State Party" under Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty, which may be more than one State. A missing United Nations registration match is not a finding of non-compliance: the Registration Convention sets no deadline for notification, and objects may be registered by a different launching State, by an intergovernmental organisation, or following a transfer of ownership. The instrument shows how far the public record runs behind the catalogue; it does not judge why.
Purpose
The Observatory was built to support a doctoral thesis in international space law at the University of Aberdeen on the preventive obligations of States under Articles VI and IX of the Outer Space Treaty in relation to AI-enabled interference with satellite systems. It is independent, non-commercial doctoral research infrastructure, created and maintained by one researcher. It is not an official University of Aberdeen resource, and the views expressed are the author's own.
Author
Hallam Burnapp is a PhD researcher in international space law at the School of Law, University of Aberdeen. LinkedIn · University profile · Email
Method and sources
All data are public: CelesTrak general perturbations data (OMM JSON) and satellite catalogue data (CSV), Jonathan McDowell's General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects (CC BY 4.0), and, for historical replays, archived element sets from a publicly hosted mirror of Space-Track history. Treaty party status follows the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs' annual status document. The full methodology, matching rules and known limits are set out under Provenance.
Citing this instrument
Every daily snapshot is versioned and archived. Cite the version DOI and snapshot date shown in the citation panel, so that the figures you rely on can be retrieved exactly as you saw them. Citation formats (OSCOLA, bibliography and BibTeX) are generated on the page.
How it was made
The author designed this instrument, defined its legal categories and verified its classifications; software and web design was prepared with agentic coding under the author's direction.
Licences
Code: MIT. Data and snapshots: CC BY 4.0. The STARS Observatory name is not covered by these licences. © 2026 Hallam Burnapp.
Privacy
No analytics or cookies; no third-party requests — the page, its fonts and its libraries are all served from starsobservatory.org (hosted on GitHub Pages); two display preferences (a dismissed first-visit hint and your chosen citation form) are stored in your browser.
Support and feedback
STARS Observatory is independent, non-commercial doctoral research infrastructure — hosting, the daily data refresh and continued development are maintained by one researcher. If it is useful to you, you can help keep it live and growing. Support · Corrections and suggestions are welcome via GitHub issues or Email.
Version
v1.8.2 · Version DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23326549 · Changelog · Repository