juliensimon/spacecraft-database

Spacecraft Database

Part of the Orbital Mechanics Datasets collection on Hugging Face.

Comprehensive database of 8,840 spacecraft — satellites, probes, space stations, and more — sourced from Wikidata.

Dataset description

From the earliest Sputnik satellites to modern mega-constellations and deep space probes, this dataset catalogs spacecraft across the entire history of the Space Age. Each record includes launch and decommission dates, operating agency, manufacturer, orbital regime, mass, and associated mission where available.

The dataset draws on Wikidata's structured knowledge base using the spacecraft class (Q40218) and all its subclasses. It is maintained by the WikiProject Spaceflight community and updated as new spacecraft are launched and documented.

Records span from 1957-10-04 to 2039-01-01, with 7,373 spacecraft having a known launch date and 1,799 with a recorded mass.

Schema

Column	Type	Description
wikidata_id	string	Wikidata entity ID (e.g. Q48371)
name	string	Spacecraft name
launch_date	string	Launch date (YYYY-MM-DD)
decommissioned_date	string	Decommissioning date (YYYY-MM-DD)
operator	string	Operating agency or organization
manufacturer	string	Manufacturer name
orbit_type	string	Orbital regime (e.g. LEO, GEO, heliocentric)
mass_kg	float	Spacecraft mass in kilograms
mission	string	Associated mission name
launch_year	int	Launch year (derived from launch_date)

Quick stats

• 8,840 total spacecraft in the database
• 7,373 spacecraft with a known launch date
• 1,799 spacecraft with a recorded mass
• 462 distinct operators
• 27 distinct orbital regimes
• Date range: 1957-10-04 to 2039-01-01
• Top operators: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (281), United States Air Force (155), Roscosmos State Corporation (126), Indian Space Research Organisation (115), European Space Agency (92)
• Top orbital regimes: geostationary orbit (597), low Earth orbit (395), Sun-synchronous orbit (242), medium Earth orbit (69), geosynchronous orbit (35)

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/spacecraft-database", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Spacecraft by operator
print(df["operator"].value_counts().head(10))

# Spacecraft by orbital regime
print(df["orbit_type"].value_counts().head(10))

# Spacecraft launched per year
print(df["launch_year"].value_counts().sort_index())

# Heaviest spacecraft
heaviest = df.nlargest(10, "mass_kg")[["name", "operator", "mass_kg", "orbit_type"]]
print(heaviest)

# Still operational (no decommission date)
operational = df[df["decommissioned_date"].isna() & df["launch_date"].notna()]
print(f"{len(operational):,} spacecraft with no recorded decommission date")

Data source

Wikidata SPARQL endpoint. Spacecraft identified via property P31 (instance of) = Q40218 (spacecraft) and all subclasses via P279*. Data is community-curated by WikiProject Spaceflight.

Update schedule

Quarterly (January, April, July, October).

Related datasets

• space-missions -- Space missions database
• satcat -- Satellite catalog (SATCAT)
• launch-vehicles -- Launch vehicle catalog

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{spacecraft_database,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {Spacecraft Database},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/spacecraft-database},
  note = {Sourced from Wikidata (CC0)}
}

License

CC0-1.0 (Wikidata content is public domain)