juliensimon/space-track-satcat

NORAD Satellite Catalog (SATCAT)

Credit: NASA

Part of a dataset collection on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

Complete NORAD Satellite Catalog from CelesTrak, tracking every object cataloged by the 18th Space Defense Squadron since 1957. Includes active satellites, defunct spacecraft, rocket bodies, and debris.

The SATCAT (Satellite Catalog) is the authoritative registry of all artificial objects in Earth orbit and beyond. Each entry includes launch metadata, orbital parameters, operational status, and physical characteristics. This dataset mirrors the full catalog daily from CelesTrak.

The satellite catalog traces its origins to the dawn of the Space Age: the first entry is Sputnik 1, launched on October 4, 1957. Every object large enough to be tracked by the US Space Surveillance Network (typically >10 cm in LEO, >1 m in GEO) receives a NORAD catalog number and an international designator (COSPAR ID). The catalog includes not just active satellites but the full historical record of rocket upper stages, mission-related debris, and fragments from breakup events.

The operational status codes provide a coarse but useful picture of spacecraft health. The radar cross-section (RCS) field, while often approximate, gives insight into object size -- critical for collision probability assessments. Orbital parameters (period, inclination, apogee, perigee) describe the object's trajectory and are updated as new tracking observations are processed.

This dataset underpins a wide range of applications: space traffic management, conjunction assessment and collision avoidance, orbital debris population studies, launch history analysis, spectrum management, and insurance risk modeling.

This dataset is suitable for tabular classification tasks.

Schema

Column	Type	Description	Sample	Null %
object_name	str	Official name as listed in the NORAD catalog (e.g. 'STARLINK-1234', 'ISS (ZARYA)'); rocket bodies include 'R/B', debris includes 'DEB'	SL-1 R/B	0.0%
intl_designator	str	COSPAR international designator in the format YYYY-NNNX (e.g. '2024-123A'): launch year, sequential launch number within that year, and piece letter (A = primary payload, B = first secondary, etc.); assigned by COSPAR	1957-001A	0.0%
norad_id	int32	NORAD catalog number -- sequential integer assigned by the 18th Space Defense Squadron at launch; primary key for cross-referencing with TLE databases	1	0.0%
object_type	str	Object classification: PAY (payload/spacecraft), R/B (rocket body or upper stage), DEB (fragmentation debris), UNK (unknown/unclassified)	R/B	0.0%
ops_status	str	Operational status code from the Space-Track catalog: + (operational), - (non-operational), P (partially operational), B (backup/standby), S (spare), X (extended mission), D (decayed), ? (unknown); null for decayed or historically untracked objects	D	24.1%
owner	str	ISO 3166-based two-letter country code or special organization code (e.g. 'US', 'RU', 'CN', 'ESA', 'ISS') identifying the launch owner or responsible party	CIS	0.0%
launch_date	datetime64[us]	Date the object was launched into orbit (UTC); null for a small number of objects with incomplete catalog records	1957-10-04 00:00:00	0.0%
launch_site	str	Encoded launch site identifier (e.g. 'AFETR' = Cape Canaveral, 'TYMSC' = Baikonur, 'TTMTR' = Tanegashima); null if unknown	TYMSC	0.0%
decay_date	datetime64[us]	Date of atmospheric reentry or decay (UTC); null for objects still in orbit -- a non-null value means the object has reentered	1957-12-01 00:00:00	48.9%
period_min	float64	Current orbital period in minutes; LEO: 88-128 min, MEO: 128-600 min, GEO: ~1436 min (24 h), HEO: highly variable; null for decayed objects	96.19	1.3%
inclination	float64	Orbital inclination in degrees (0-180); angle between the orbital plane and Earth's equatorial plane; 0 deg = equatorial, 90 deg = polar, >90 deg = retrograde	65.1	1.3%
apogee_km	float64	Apogee altitude (highest point of orbit) above Earth's surface in km; null for decayed objects or those with incomplete orbital data	938.0	1.3%
perigee_km	float64	Perigee altitude (lowest point of orbit) above Earth's surface in km; objects with perigee below ~200 km reenter within weeks; null for decayed objects	214.0	1.3%
rcs_m2	float64	Radar cross-section in m2; proxy for object physical size as observed by surveillance radars; null for objects too small to characterize or where data was not published	20.42	52.0%
data_status	str	Catalog data quality flag indicating whether the entry has full orbital data (S = standard, D = no current elements) or is a historical record; null in many cases	NEA	98.2%
orbit_center	str	Central gravitational body code (e.g. 'EA' = Earth, 'MO' = Moon); nearly all objects are Earth-orbiting; useful for filtering lunar or Lagrange-point objects	EA	0.0%
orbit_type	str	Orbit regime classification (e.g. 'LEO' = low Earth orbit <2000 km, 'MEO' = medium Earth orbit, 'GEO' = geostationary, 'HEO' = highly elliptical, 'DSO' = deep space); null for many historical objects	IMP	0.0%

Quick stats

• 68,594 cataloged objects
• 25,840 payloads, 35,751 debris fragments, 6,835 rocket bodies
• 15,557 active or partially operational
• 35,018 objects have decayed/reentered
• 129 distinct owner codes

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/space-track-satcat", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/space-track-satcat", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Active payloads only
active = df[(df["object_type"] == "PAY") & (df["ops_status"] == "+")]
print(f"{len(active):,} active payloads")

# Launches per year
df["year"] = df["launch_date"].dt.year
launches_by_year = df.groupby("year")["norad_id"].count()

# Objects by owner
top_owners = df["owner"].value_counts().head(10)

# LEO vs GEO
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
leo = df[(df["perigee_km"] < 2000) & (df["perigee_km"] > 0)]
geo = df[(df["perigee_km"] > 35000) & (df["apogee_km"] < 36500)]
print(f"LEO: {len(leo):,}, GEO: {len(geo):,}")

Data source

https://celestrak.org/pub/satcat.csv

Update schedule

Daily at 06:00 UTC via GitHub Actions.

Related datasets

• juliensimon/starlink-fleet-data

• juliensimon/space-launch-log

• juliensimon/starlink-ground-stations

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About the author

Created by Julien Simon — AI Operating Partner at Fortino Capital. Part of the Space Datasets collection.

Citation

@dataset{space_track_satcat,
  title = {NORAD Satellite Catalog (SATCAT)},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/space-track-satcat},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0