how many man made satellites orbit earth?

Answer 1

NASA's Satellite Situation Report lists 24,972 objects in orbit around the earth. See the report at the link, below, for more info like a breakdown as to how many are in decaying orbit and how many by country.

Answer 2

If you count space junk, then hundreds of thousands. One rather stupid experiment done in the early 1960's released several tons of ordinary nails into Earth orbit, on purpose!! I think a better question might be "how many man made satellites orbit Mars?" I believe it is 3, but it could be as many as 8 if you count non-functional ones. There is one man made satellite orbiting Saturn (Cassini), and perhaps one or two non-functional man made satellites orbiting Venus. There are at least several thousand man made satellites simply orbiting the Sun, and at least 4 man made spacecraft (and maybe 5 if you count the upcoming Pluto Express mission) that have achieved escape velocity from the sun, so they are essentially in orbit around the galactic core, just as the Sun is. To my knowledge, no man made object has escaped the galaxy, but this is something to look forward to when that day inevitably arrives!!

Answer 3

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.
Carol (age 35, Nashville, TN, USA)
(September 11, 1997)


http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/kids_space/sat.html

Answer 4

132

Answer 5

well there is over 1500 that were put into orbit so far world wide. but we have left so much space junk and debris up there it is well over 58000 piece of trash . it is getting crowded up there .

Answer 6

9,000. Only 3,000 are useful artificial satellites, the other 6,000 are "space junk" (Data according to NASA).