Space Activities in 2019 Jonathan McDowell
[email protected] 2020 Jan 12 Rev 1.3 Contents Preface 3 1 Orbital Launch Attempts 3 1.1 Launch statistics by country . 3 1.2 Launch failures . 4 1.3 Commercial Launches . 4 2 Satellite Launch Statistics 6 2.1 Satellites of the major space powers, past 8 years . 6 2.2 Satellite ownership by country . 7 2.3 Satellite manufacture by country . 11 3 Scientific Space Programs 11 4 Military Space Activities 12 4.1 Military R&D . 12 4.2 Space surveillance . 12 4.3 Reconnaissance and Signals Intelligence . 13 4.4 Space Weapons . 13 5 Special Topics 13 5.1 The Indian antisatellite test and its implications . 13 5.2 Starlink . 19 5.3 Lightsail-2 . 24 5.4 Kosmos-2535/2536 . 25 5.5 Kosmos-2542/2543 . 29 5.6 Starliner . 29 5.7 OTV-5 and its illegal secret deployments . 32 5.8 TJS-3 . 33 6 Orbital Debris and Orbital Decay 35 6.1 Disposal of launch vehicle upper stages . 36 6.2 Orbituaries . 39 6.3 Retirements in the GEO belt . 42 6.4 Debris events . 43 7 Acknowledgements 43 Appendix 1: 2019 Orbital Launch Attempts 44 1 Appendix 2a: Satellite payloads launched in 2018 (Status end 2019) 46 Appendix 2b: Satellite payloads deployed in 2018 (Revised; Status end 2019) 55 Appendix 2c: Satellite payloads launched in 2019 63 Appendix 2d: Satellite payloads deployed in 2019 72 Rev 1.0 - Jan 02 Initial version Rev 1.1 - Jan 02 Fixed two incorrect values in tables 4a/4b Rev 1.2 - Jan 02 Minor typos fixed Rev 1.3 - Jan 12 Corrected RL10 variant, added K2491 debris event, more typos 2 Preface In this paper I present some statistics characterizing astronautical activity in calendar year 2019.