Do you know who owns the thousands of satellites that are currently orbiting the planet? From commercial satellites to government-owned observation satellites, there are 4,550 satellites orbiting Earth right now. More than half of them are used for communications purposes.
The team at Dewesoft created a visualization that highlights the companies that own the most satellites. It also features the countries that own the most. These are the top 10 countries that have the most satellites in space:
United States: 2,804
China: 467
United Kingdom: 349
Russia: 168
Japan: 93
India: 61
Canada: 57
Germany: 47
Luxembourg: 40
Argentina: 34
In total, there are 75 different countries that have satellites orbiting Earth. The United States is responsible for the vast majority of them, and more than half of the U.S.-based satellites belong to SpaceX, which was founded by Elon Musk in 2002.