How many earth launched satellites are currently orbiting the Earth?
Well, that depends on how you define satellite! One definition of the word satellite is a body that orbits a larger body. If you take this as the definition of satellite then the answer to our question is millions! This includes actual spacecraft, and any man-made debris that has been made during the past 30 years of space exploration. People call this debris “space junk”. “Space junk” orbits at a speed of roughly 7.5 kilometers/second. That is close to 17,000 miles/hour! Think of the damage even a small speck of paint could do to the space shuttle if impact occurred at such high speeds ! Another definition of satellite is a manufactured vehicle intended to orbit the Earth. This definition makes our count much less because it includes only spacecraft and not debris that orbits the Earth. The Goddard Space Flight Center’s lists 2,271 sate llites currently in orbit. Russia has the most satellites currently in orbit, with 1,324 satellites, followed by the U.S. with 658. Hope I Helped!
“The United States Space Surveillance Network (SSN) has been tracking space objects since 1957 when the Soviets opened the space age with the launch of Sputnik I. Since then, the SSN has tracked more than 26,000 space objects orbiting Earth. The SSN currently tracks more than 8,000 man-made orbiting objects. The rest have re-entered Earth’s turbulent atmosphere and disintegrated, or survived re-entry and impacted the Earth. The space objects now orbiting Earth range from satellites weighing several tons to pieces of spent rocket bodies weighing only 10 pounds. About seven percent of the space objects are operational satellites (i.e. ~560 satellites), the rest are space debris. USSTRATCOM is primarily interested in the active satellites, but also tracks space debris which upon reentry might otherwise be mistaken for incoming missiles.