Jonathan McDowell's Starlink statistics: launched, in orbit, working, reentered

What it is

Jonathan McDowell is an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the author of Jonathan's Space Report, a newsletter that has documented every launch since 1989. His Starlink statistics page, part of planet4589.org, is a machine-generated ledger of every Starlink satellite: launched, in orbit, working (in an operational orbit), screened, being disposed of, reentered. It is updated whenever the public catalogue changes, several times a day; the page states its own timestamp ("2026 Sep 21 12:54" when we read it).

The figures on 21 September 2026

• All generations: 12,962 launched, 11,154 in orbit, 11,139 working, 1,808 down (reentered or failed).
• Generation 1 (v1.0 and v1.5): 4,714 launched, 3,185 in orbit, 3,173 working; the early satellites are being deorbited as they age.
• Generation 2 (V2 Mini): 8,228 launched, 7,969 in orbit, 7,966 working.
• Generation 3: 20 launched on Starship Flight 13 on 24 July 2026, none in orbit (a deliberate short-lived test batch), plus 2 earlier Gen3 demonstration units.
• Launches: every mission has its own table (the latest was numbered 375 when we read the page); 171 satellites are marked "screened" and 221 are in "disposal".

The page is careful about definitions: "working" means the satellite is in its operational orbit, and it notes that satellites still raising or lowering their orbit may nevertheless carry traffic. The gap between "in orbit" and "working" is therefore small; the gap between "launched" and "in orbit" (about 14 %) is the honest measure of attrition, planned deorbits included.

Who it is for

Anyone who has to write "Starlink has N satellites" and be right: journalists, analysts, consultants, and sales teams who prefer not to be corrected in a meeting. SpaceX's own Network Update said "more than 7,800 satellites in orbit" in mid-2025; this page tells you what the number is today and how it was built. It is also the reference for launch cadence, which matters for the capacity arguments in our Amazon Leo analysis: Amazon had 398 satellites launched by July 2026 against Starlink's 12,900.

How to use it

1. Open the page and read the summary table; note the timestamp and cite it with your figure.
2. Use the per-launch tables to trace a batch (how many of a given launch are still working), which is how failure rates by generation are computed.
3. Combine with CelesTrak element sets if you need positions rather than counts.

Limits

It counts objects, not capacity or customers, and it relies on the public catalogue, so it says nothing about classified Starshield satellites. The page is plain HTML with no API; scrape it politely or transcribe the summary.

Related

Definitions: launch cadence, orbital debris, debris mitigation, Starlink. Directories: Starlink providers, LEO providers.