How many satellites were launched each decade?
Including satellites of Mars Moon Venus Sun etc
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$\begingroup$ @JonHeller - pinging for hopefully getting an nice scripted answer. I can put a bounty on it also $\endgroup$– Joe JobsCommented Nov 5, 2020 at 18:43
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2$\begingroup$ From meta FAQ click How do comment @replies work? From there you'll see that the "magic @" won't send a notification to someone unless they've already posted a comment here. Stack Exchange isn't wired for actual "pinging". However if you know of a post by another user (or a post with a comment by that user) that is related to this question, in Space SE it is usually considered acceptable to leave a short comment there mentioning this related new question. $\endgroup$– uhohCommented Nov 5, 2020 at 22:29
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Number of satellites launched per decade:
DECADE SATELLITE_COUNT
------ ---------------
1950 33
1960 2323
1970 4504
1980 5744
1990 3936
2000 2309
2010 2341
The results are once again from the JSR 2017 report and are based on this query:
--Satellites launched per decade (excluding debris).
select trunc(to_char(launch_date, 'YYYY')/10)*10 decade, count(*) satellite_count
from launch
join satellite
on launch.launch_id = satellite.launch_id
where official_name not like 'deb %'
group by trunc(to_char(launch_date, 'YYYY')/10)*10
order by decade;
This answer provides information about how to run the query yourself. Hopefully that information is convenient enough that you can write queries and answer your own questions - let me know if the site is not working or if you have ideas for improving it.
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$\begingroup$ Awesome again! Can you please do the same by year? space.stackexchange.com/questions/48375/… $\endgroup$– Joe JobsCommented Nov 6, 2020 at 3:08
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3$\begingroup$ It might be worth noting that around half of that are marked as debris. According to the list I found 3462 alone are debris of [Fengyun-1C ](de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fengyun-1C) which arteficially inflates the number of satellites launched in 1990. Maybe you should filter out all satellites that start with "deb". $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 6, 2020 at 8:31
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1$\begingroup$ Also bear in mind that many launches put up more than one satellite so even excluding the debris the number of actual satellites is a lot less than the number of launches. For example, on 18 August a single Falcon launch carried fifty-eight Starlink satellites and three SkySats. $\endgroup$– GordonDCommented Nov 6, 2020 at 10:36
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2$\begingroup$ @Christoph Thank you for the suggestion. I removed 'deb %' from the results and the numbers look quite different now! $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 6, 2020 at 14:58
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$\begingroup$ Oops! I should have said in my comment above that the number of actual satellites is a lot MORE than the number of launches. Can't see how to edit it, but I'm sure you knew what I meant. $\endgroup$– GordonDCommented Nov 7, 2020 at 11:43