Every launch since Sputnik, and the satellites it carried

7,633 launches from 1957-10-04 to 2026-10-02, and 27,900 payloads, every one linked to the launch that carried it by the COSPAR launch number they share. With who uses and runs each satellite, where it is registered, and whether the US withholds its orbit.

launches.csvsatellites.csvData dictionaryCITATION.cff

Version 2026-10-06. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23184904, on Zenodo. Licensed CC BY 4.0: use it for anything, with credit.

How the links are made

Each satellite in CelesTrak's catalogue has a COSPAR id (1997-061A for Cassini), whose first part is its launch. Launch Library 2 records that number for every launch that reached orbit, and the two are joined on it, so no link is a guess by date or place. Who uses and runs each satellite comes from Jonathan McDowell's GCAT.

Citing

Osborne, M. (2026). Launches and the satellites they carried, 1957 to 2026 (Version 2026-10-06) [Dataset]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23184904

That DOI always resolves to the newest version; this version is 10.5281/zenodo.23184905. Built from Launch Library 2 (The Space Devs), CelesTrak, and GCAT by Jonathan McDowell (CC-BY).

Sources

Launch Library 2 by The Space Devs; CelesTrak's satellite catalogue; GCAT by Jonathan McDowell (CC-BY); Wikipedia articles through Wikidata.

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