When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The number of spacecraft orbiting Earth is rising fast thanks to the emergence of private ...

Satellites in low-Earth orbit play a key role in helping us study and understand our planet. Orbiting at altitudes usually between 100 and 1200 miles (160 and 2,000 kilometers), these satellites are ...

One of the most important satellite launches of all time was that of Sputnik. When the Soviet satellite became the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth on October 4, 1957, space must have seemed ...

The view of Earth from space is famously familiar—bright blue ocean, swirling gyres of white clouds, touches of terrestrial ...

For more than sixty years, a tiny asteroid has been moving in step with Earth, hidden from view until recently. Astronomers now confirm that this small body, named 2025 PN7, is traveling in a special ...

In the last five years, the number of satellites orbiting Earth has more than doubled and will likely double again within a similar timespan, thanks to the efforts of private companies such as SpaceX.