juliensimon/reentry-events

Reentry Events

Part of the Orbital Mechanics Datasets collection on Hugging Face.

Catalog of 34,930 objects that have reentered Earth's atmosphere, derived from the NORAD Satellite Catalog (SATCAT) via CelesTrak. An object is considered reentered when its DECAY_DATE is recorded in the SATCAT. Covers reentries from 1957 to 2026.

Dataset description

Every object launched into Earth orbit eventually returns -- whether through natural orbital decay, controlled deorbits, or breakup. This dataset catalogs every object in the NORAD SATCAT that has a recorded decay date, providing a comprehensive history of atmospheric reentries. It includes payloads, rocket bodies, and debris, with derived fields like time spent in orbit and decay year for trend analysis.

Schema

Column	Type	Description
norad_id	int32	NORAD catalog number (unique identifier)
object_name	string	Official name (e.g. "COSMOS 1234 DEB")
object_type	string	PAY (payload), R/B (rocket body), DEB (debris), UNK (unknown)
country_code	string	Owner/operator country or organization code
launch_date	datetime	Launch date (UTC)
decay_date	datetime	Date of atmospheric reentry (UTC)
period_min	float	Last recorded orbital period in minutes
inclination_deg	float	Last recorded orbital inclination in degrees
apogee_km	float	Last recorded apogee altitude in km
perigee_km	float	Last recorded perigee altitude in km
rcs_size	string	Radar cross-section size category (SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE)
days_in_orbit	int	Days between launch and decay
decay_year	int32	Year of reentry (for grouping/filtering)

Quick stats

• 34,930 reentered objects
• 7,205 payloads, 23,194 debris fragments, 4,427 rocket bodies
• Median time in orbit: 926 days
• Reentries span 1957 to 2026
• Top countries: CIS (18,478), US (10,351), PRC (3,093), FR (830), JPN (585)

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/reentry-events", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Reentries per year
reentries_by_year = df.groupby("decay_year")["norad_id"].count()
reentries_by_year.tail(10)

# Longest-lived objects
longest = df.nlargest(10, "days_in_orbit")[["object_name", "days_in_orbit", "launch_date", "decay_date"]]

# Reentries by object type
df["object_type"].value_counts()

# Recent reentries (last 30 days)
import pandas as pd
recent = df[df["decay_date"] > pd.Timestamp.now() - pd.Timedelta(days=30)]

Data source

Derived from the CelesTrak SATCAT, which mirrors the official US Space Command catalog maintained by the 18th Space Defense Squadron. Objects with a recorded DECAY_DATE are extracted as reentry events.

Update schedule

Daily at 07:15 UTC via GitHub Actions.

Related datasets

• space-track-satcat -- Full NORAD satellite catalog
• space-launch-log -- Global launch history from GCAT
• tle-history -- Historical two-line element sets

Pipeline

Source code: juliensimon/space-datasets

Support

If you find this dataset useful, please give it a ❤️ on the dataset page and share feedback in the Community tab! Also consider giving a ⭐️ to the space-datasets repo.

Citation

@dataset{reentry_events,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {Reentry Events},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/reentry-events},
  note = {Derived from NORAD SATCAT via CelesTrak (Dr. T.S. Kelso)}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0