Satellites & Orbital Decay
Satellites on TerraPulse are organized into two CelestialObjectDexes — one slot per tracked object. One catalogs every object in orbit; the other follows how each object's orbit sinks over time as it plows through the thin upper atmosphere. Every element is a tracked, measured position. No estimates, no forecasts.
The dexes
The data lives across two CelestialObjectDexes. Counts are live and grow with every fetch:
| Dex | Holds | Records |
|---|---|---|
satcat | The satellite catalog — every tracked object in orbit, one slot each | 69,830 |
satellite_decay | Per-object orbital-decay tracks from the live element feed | 16,377 |
Together, about 86,000 tracked objects — active satellites, spent rocket bodies, and debris.
Provenance
Both dexes trace to CelesTrak, the long-running public
catalog of orbital data. satcat mirrors the master satellite catalog; satellite_decay
is built from CelesTrak's live GP (General Perturbations) orbital element feed,
turning the running stream of elements into a decay track for each object. Nothing is
projected forward — each track is the sequence of elements as they were actually
published.
What's in a record
Each object slot carries:
- Identity — NORAD catalog number, international designator, and object name
- Object type — payload, rocket body, or debris
- Orbit — inclination, apogee, perigee, and period
- Element set — the two-line element (TLE) as published
- Decay track — the run of orbital elements over time, showing the orbit sinking (decay dex)
Explored in
- A Fleet-Scale Drag Sensor Meets a Real Storm — using satellite orbital decay to feel the thermosphere swell during a geomagnetic storm