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Orbit passes Barbados
Orbit's electricity overtakes Barbados's 1.11 TWh a year. See the league.
53 countries and territories behind it
How far has humanity climbed toward harnessing the Sun? This tracker measures the solar power and the computing we have put into Earth orbit, live, and sets them against everything we use on the ground.
Last updated: · Orbital Radar live tracking data
Generating in orbit now Live estimate
from 16,833 working satellites: 71% in sunlight, 4,945 in Earth's shadow
installed on about 2,250 working satellites
It powers the satellites themselves. None of it is sent to Earth yet.
At any moment hundreds of satellites are above your horizon, and most of them are in sunlight even when it is dark where you are. This is your sky right now, all the way round, with every satellite in it and the solar power passing over your head.
Over London now
generating over your head, from 881 satellites above your horizon, all of them in sunlight
What you are looking at
It is daytime in London, so the Sun lights every satellite above you: all 881 are generating, though daylight hides them from view.
The geostationary belt arcs across your southern sky, up to 31° high: 182 satellites that hang still in your sky, generating 1.5 MW between them.
Who is overhead
The sky opens on your approximate location, and nothing is stored. Every satellite is drawn where it is in your sky right now.
The Kardashev scale ranks a civilisation by the power it can command, and each whole step is ten billion times the last. Humanity rates 0.732 today. The solar power we have put into orbit, the first step toward collecting the Sun's energy in space, rates 0.239 and is climbing far faster.
Humanity's rating of 0.732 is made on the ground. Power stations, engines, furnaces, solar farms and data centres add up to about 20.8 TW, and none of it comes from orbit yet. Orbit is still a rounding error next to it, and that gap is the distance between a Type 0.7 civilisation and one that collects its energy in space.
Humanity's power, by source
2025, each square is 100 GWused by humanity, every source combined: a Kardashev rating of 0.732, growing about 1.3% a year.
Oil, coal and gas still supply 80% of humanity's power. Solar panels supply 1.5%, and solar is the fastest-growing source. On this grid, all the solar power in orbit is the speck in the dotted square: 1/400 the size of one square.
Earth's solar panels, right now
generating now, out of 3,182 GW installed: about 1,400 times what every satellite in orbit is generating.
Earth's solar output, the last 24 hours
Earth's solar panels generated 331 TWh in August 2026. Output follows the Sun round the world and peaks as it crosses the countries with the most panels.
Solar power, on the ground and in orbit
Earth's solar panels add up to 3,182 GW. Every satellite runs on its own solar arrays: 245 MW between them, and none of it is sent to the ground yet. The two circles are drawn to scale by area.
Computing and the power behind it
The share of the world's AI computing that is in orbit.
Bars on a logarithmic scale. Earth's data centres draw over 400 times what every satellite in orbit generates: about 0.3% of everything humanity uses.
Add up the electricity every satellite generates in a year and orbit already out-produces 52 countries and territories. If it were a country it would rank 158th of 210 for electricity, between Barbados and Benin, and at the pace it is growing it passes another every five weeks or so.
Electricity generated in a year
Each country: its latest full yeara year from every satellite in orbit together, more than 52 countries and territories each generate.
Next to pass
1.11 TWh a year. At today's pace, orbit passes it within weeks.
Passed most recently
A single satellite switches on and off every orbit as it passes through Earth's shadow. Thousands of them crossing the shadow at different moments keep orbit's total remarkably steady, at about half of what is installed.
One satellite, one orbit: the ISS
Diagram sped up 120 times, not to scaleThe ISS right now
In sunlight and generating.
The station's arrays are rated about 230 kW and generate about 184 kW in sunlight. One lap of the Earth takes about an hour and a half; in Earth's shadow the station runs on batteries, which the arrays recharge in sunlight.
Thousands of satellites at once
Each row is one satellite over the last 24 hours: gold while it is in sunlight, dark while it crosses Earth's shadow. A few orbits never leave the sunlight; most switch off for half an hour on every lap. Added together, thousands of them give the steady total underneath.
Eclipse seasons
Twice a year, around the equinoxes, geostationary satellites pass through Earth's shadow once a night, for up to about 70 minutes, and run on batteries until they come out.
Drag along the year to move the Sun and watch the shadow.
In a solar eclipse the Moon's shadow falls on satellites as well as on the ground. Each one it crosses loses some or all of its sunlight for a few minutes and runs on its batteries until it comes out. On 12 August 2026 it switched off up to 8.9 MW of satellites at once, about 7% of everything generating in orbit. Next: an annular eclipse on 6 February 2027, then a total eclipse on 2 August 2027.
Total eclipse, 12 August 2026
18:31 UTC
switched off by the Moon's shadow, across 1,668 satellites.
The Moon also crosses the ring of geostationary satellites now and then. Next: 8 January 2027, when its shadow passes over 138 of them, each for up to 50 minutes.
From one watt on Vanguard 1 to 245 megawatts today: more than 200 million times as much. For decades the total crept up with each new communications satellite. Since the first Starlink launch in 2019 it has grown about 48 times over.
Solar power in Earth orbit, 1958 to today
Each step up the scale is 1,000 times moreThe same on an ordinary scale
Almost all of it went up after 2019.
Every launch adds to the total and every re-entry takes something away. These are the latest flights, newest first, with the solar power and the computing each one put into orbit. The list updates itself as launches happen.
| Date | Launch | What went up | Power | Computing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Oct | Re-entries Orbital Register | 3 satellites re-entered, 2 of them Starlink | −32 kW | None |
| 20 Oct | Falcon 9 Bandwagon 5 | Satellites still being identified | Being identified | None |
| 16 Oct | Falcon 9 USSF-481 | 17 US military satellites | Not public | None |
| 14 Oct | Zhuque-2E | 8 ADA Space computing satellites and 2 other satellites | +3 kW | Not yet disclosed |
| 13 Oct | Re-entries Orbital Register | 18 satellites re-entered, 11 of them Starlink | −83 kW | None |
| 13 Oct | Falcon 9 Starlink Group 15-25 | 27 Starlink satellites | +0.71 MW | None |
| 10 Oct | Falcon 9 SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer A | 21 US military data-relay satellites | +34 kW | None |
| 9 Oct | Long March 12 SatNet LEO Group 27 | 9 Guowang satellites | +54 kW | None |
| 7 Oct | Nuri NeonSat-2 to 6 | 14 South Korean small satellites | +2 kW | None |
| 6 Oct | Re-entries Orbital Register | 20 satellites re-entered, 17 of them Starlink | −0.14 MW | None |
| 2 Oct | Falcon Heavy NROL-97 | A classified US satellite | Not public | None |
| 1 Oct | Falcon 9 Transporter 18 | 76 satellites, including Google's Project Suncatcher prototype | +16 kW | +7.3 POPS |
Updated 20 October 2026. Crewed and cargo flights to space stations are not listed. Re-entries appear here as they happen, from the Orbital Register, and every launch is in the launch database.
SpaceX's Starlink satellites carry more than nine in every ten watts of solar power in orbit. The rest is spread across geostationary communications satellites, government constellations, the new broadband networks from Amazon and China, navigation satellites and the space stations.
Installed solar power of working satellites in Earth orbit, 20 October 2026.
Orbital data centres are the newest use for that power: computers that run on sunlight and shed their heat straight into space. Everything computing in orbit today adds up to about nine of the AI chips that fill data centres on Earth. The first full-scale designs, such as SpaceX's Starmind, are due to launch from 2027.
Computing in orbit now
Thousand trillion operations a second, rated the way AI chips are rated.
About nine H100-class AI chips: less than a single server rack on Earth.
By country
Systems with published figures only.
Not yet counted: Eight computing satellites that ADA Space launched on 14 October, and three more Chinese computing satellites launched since July. Their figures have not been published yet. ADA Space rates its newest design at more than 10 POPS per satellite, so this batch alone could outweigh everything above.
| System | Operator | In orbit since | Computing | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project Suncatcher prototype | Google, with Planet | Oct 2026 | 7.3 POPS | Reported |
| Three-Body Computing Constellation 12 satellites | ADA Space and Zhejiang Lab | May 2025 | 5.0 POPS | Operator figure |
| Optical relay network 10 satellites | Kepler Communications | Jan 2026 | 2.8 POPS | Estimate |
| Starcloud-1 | Starcloud | Nov 2025 | 2.0 POPS | Operator figure |
| Spaceborne Computer-2 on the ISS | HPE | 2024 | 0.26 POPS | Reported |
| Phobos and Deimos | Aethero | 2024 | 0.13 POPS | Operator figure |
| MOI-1A | TakeMe2Space | Oct 2026 | 0.06 POPS | Reported |
| Star-Compute Group 02 8 satellites | ADA Space | Oct 2026 | Not yet disclosed | Waiting |
Computing in orbit since 2024
The launches and thresholds that will change these figures most over the next year. Set an alert on any of them and Orbital Radar tells you when it happens. Every launch is also on the launch schedule.
Orbit's electricity overtakes Barbados's 1.11 TWh a year. See the league.
An annular solar eclipse, in 109 days. The Moon's shadow will cross thousands of satellites. See it on the map.
The largest Starlink satellites yet, launched dozens at a time on Starship.
ADA Space's next batch of computing satellites, after the 8 launched on 14 October.
A kilowatt-class satellite built to beam power to the ground by infrared laser, from the company formerly called Aetherflux.
Two computing satellites of about 8 kW each, launching as rideshares.
Google's follow-up to its prototype, testing laser links between computing satellites.
SpaceX's first full-scale computing satellite. Follow it on the Starmind tracker.
On current launch plans the total reaches 300 to 420 MW by the end of 2027.
A gigawatt of solar power in orbit: the next order of magnitude, and a Kardashev rating of 0.300.
In 1964 the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev proposed ranking civilisations by the energy they can harness. A Type I civilisation commands the energy available on its home planet, a Type II civilisation the entire output of its star, and a Type III civilisation that of its galaxy.
Carl Sagan later turned the three types into a continuous scale, so that any civilisation gets a rating. Each whole step means ten billion times more power. On Sagan's scale humanity rated about 0.7 in 1973. Today it rates 0.732, rising by about 0.0006 a year.
Climbing toward Type II means collecting starlight in space, which is why this tracker follows orbit. The solar arrays on today's satellites are humanity's first small step in that direction, and orbital data centres are where energy and computing meet.
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