A national fleet run mostly by one agency
India owns 78 active satellites as of October 17, 2026, 0.5% of the world total and the tenth largest national fleet. The Indian Space Research Organisation, formed on August 15, 1969, after INCOSPAR was set up in 1962, is the operator of 54 of them, 69%.
The mix is unusual. Earth imaging is the biggest category with 28 satellites, then communications with 20. And 33 of the 78, 42%, sit in geosynchronous orbit, a higher share than any of the other nine countries on this site has. Most of the others rely on low orbits, where Starlink has crowded the numbers.
What they do
Earth imaging accounts for 28 of India's active satellites (36%).
Where they orbit
Who operates them
The largest operators, and the largest families of satellites, owned by India.
By operator
By satellite family
Operator names are as written in GCAT, usually transliterated from the original language. Families group satellites by the first word of their name.
How the fleet has grown
At the end of 2005, India had 31 payloads in Earth orbit. By the end of 2025 it had 113.
Launches
India has made 103 orbital launch attempts since its first in 1979, and 5 of them in 2025. Its busiest year was 2016 with 7.
The first satellite and the long road to a rocket
India's first satellite, Aryabhata, launched on April 19, 1975 on a Soviet Kosmos-3M from Kapustin Yar, under a 1972 agreement between India and the Soviet Union. ISRO built it, and power failed after four days and signals were lost after five. It came down on February 10, 1992.
India's own rocket took longer. GCAT logs the first Indian launch attempt in 1979, and the first success was the SLV-3 carrying Rohini from Sriharikota on July 18, 1980. Since then India has made 103 orbital launch attempts. The busiest year was 2016 with 7, and in 2025 there were 5, 4 of them successful. That's a small number next to 92 from China, and the launches-per-year page puts it in context.
Missions that go beyond the count
Some of India's best-known spacecraft don't show up in a table of active Earth satellites. The Mars Orbiter Mission, Mangalyaan, launched on a PSLV in 2013. It was the first Asian spacecraft to enter Martian orbit. Chandrayaan-3 made a soft landing near the lunar south pole on August 23, 2023. Both are on the mission pages, under countries that reached Mars and countries that have landed on the Moon.
A different record is about volume. In 2008 India launched 11 satellites on one rocket, including nine foreign ones. Ride-share launches like that are how many small satellites reach orbit, and they're one reason a country's launch count and its satellite count rarely match.
NavIC, a navigation system with gaps
India's regional navigation system is called NavIC. GCAT lists 7 satellites in the IRNSS family and 8 in the navigation category. The design calls for seven satellites, three geostationary and four in inclined geosynchronous orbit. The first one, IRNSS-1A, launched on July 1, 2013, and IRNSS-1H was lost on August 31, 2017, when its fairing failed to separate.
The system's health is worth a careful reading. In March 2026 only three satellites were providing positioning service, below the four needed for an accurate fix, and NVS-02 had failed to reach orbit after launching on January 29, 2025. For comparison, the GPS page shows what a fully populated constellation looks like.
A young commercial layer
Alongside ISRO, a small commercial group is growing. NewSpace India Limited is ISRO's commercial wing and Antrix its marketing arm. The best-known private fleet is Pixxel's. The company, based in Bengaluru and founded in 2019 by two students at BITS Pilani, builds hyperspectral imaging satellites called Fireflies, and it launched three Fireflies on January 14, 2025 and three more on August 26, 2025, both times on a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg. GCAT lists 6 Firefly satellites.
India launches most of its own, though not all: 51 of its 78 active satellites flew on Indian rockets, 14 on American rockets and 12 on rockets credited to France.
Beyond those, the table is thin. After ISRO's 54 and Pixxel's 6, no operator has more than 2 satellites. India's satellite count is a fleet built by one agency, with the private layer only beginning to show.