Source: ASTRIAGraph
By Maria Cooper
Many of us look up into the night sky and imagine a vast, untouched wilderness – spare a satellite or two whizzing past. Nowadays, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Earth’s lower orbit and beyond are quickly becoming overrun by man-made spacecraft. 2024 saw record numbers of launch attempts for the fourth consecutive year, equivalent to one launch every 34 hours. From advances in satellite internet and critical mineral mining, to exploration and tourism, space is a booming industry.
Our presence in space is not only measured by numbers and graphs, but by mapping too. ASTRIAGraph is a near real-time map of every man-made object that surrounds our planet in space, created by Professor Moriba Jah and his colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin. It gathers data from six sources and combines them into an interactive, user-friendly interface. The interface includes various base maps and customizable filters, allowing users to sort by data source, constellation, country of origin, and orbit regime. The map is also colour-coded to reflect rocket bodies, debris and uncategorized objects, as well as active and inactive satellites. By clicking on an individual object, you can find information about its country of origin, when it was launched, its speed, and even view its orbital pathway.
Source: ASTRIAGraph
The most striking part of ASTRIAGraph, however, is its depiction of the sheer volume of objects in our outer atmosphere. Thousands of orange dotted active satellites hover near Earth’s surface, in the zone known as Lower Earth Orbit (LEO). LEO refers to the region between approximately 100 and 1,000 miles (160 – 1,600 km) above Earth’s surface, home to the majority of functional satellites. Artificial satellites are man-made objects placed into orbit for activities including communications, weather forecasting, navigation, research, and surveillance. Of the roughly 22,300 satellites launched into space since Sputnik in 1957, about 14,690 remain in orbit. Of those in orbit, around 12,100 are still operational. There are over 3,000 inactive satellites in Earth’s orbit: most are in so-called “graveyard orbit”, a distant zone which reduces the likelihood of collisions with functional satellites. This is the blue-dot dominated zone in ASTRIAGraph, located just beyond the reach of the orange active satellites.
The past decade has seen an explosion in spacecraft launches. The European Space Agency (ESA) estimates that there are now 54,000 objects greater than 10cm (4 inches) currently orbiting Earth. If you include debris greater than 1mm in size, the number is upwards of 140 million. If they were to come into contact with one another, even these small fragments of debris travelling at orbital speeds can damage operational spacecraft. This growing cloud of so-called “space junk” – non-functional, human-made objects orbiting Earth – poses a serious threat to the safety and operation of space activities. Ranging from defunct satellites and discarded rocket parts to tiny shards from past collisions, these fragments travel at speeds exceeding 18,000 miles per hour (28,000 km/h). As orbits become increasingly crowded, the risk of collisions rises, potentially triggering a cascade of debris that could render vital orbital zones unusable – a scenario known as the Kessler Syndrome.
Source: Our World in Data
Perhaps the most notable development in 21st century space exploration is the rise of private sector involvement. Companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic have dramatically transformed the industry, driving innovation, lowering launch costs and accelerating the pace of missions. However, the commercialisation of space has outpaced international regulations. If left unchecked, this continued rapid growth could lead to overcrowding, resource conflicts, and environmental degradation beyond Earth. Space is increasingly treated not just as a domain for exploration, but as a new capitalist frontier in critical mineral extraction, solar energy farming, and even tourism. Key questions have been raised over equitable access to space, as it becomes a new activity for those who can afford a $450,000 ticket onboard a Virgin Galactic space flight.
You can check out ASTRIAGraph here: http://astria.tacc.utexas.edu/AstriaGraph/
Sources
BBC News. Space junk map tracks 200 ‘ticking time bombs’. BBC, Science and Environment, April 26 (2021). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-56845104.
Clark, L. Junking orbital junk? The mind behind ASTRIAGraph database project hopes to ‘make space transparent’. The Register, August 25 (2021). https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/25/astriagraph_space_junk/.
European Space Agency. Space Debris Environment Report. Space Debris User Portal, June 26 (2025). https://sdup.esoc.esa.int/discosweb/statistics/.
Moriba K., J. ASTRIAGraph. The University of Texas at Austin, webpage. https://sites.utexas.edu/moriba/astriagraph/.
United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs – with major processing by Our World in Data. Annual number of objects launched into space. UNOOSA (dataset) (2025). United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, “Online Index of Objects Launched into Outer Space” (original data). https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-launched-into-outer-space.
Zhao, Y. Space commercialization and the development of Space Law. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Planetary Science (2018).