About Sci-Tech Maven

Sci-Tech Maven covers 7,433 launches to Earth orbit and beyond, from Sputnik in October 1957 to October 27, 2026: each with its date, rocket, launch site and pad, outcome and the payloads it carried. Around them are pages for 295 launch vehicles, 46 spaceports, 167 agencies and companies, 7,588 spacecraft, 367 crewed flights and 709 people who flew to space.

Launch and payload data come from GCAT, the General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects compiled by astrophysicist Jonathan C. McDowell and released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. The log includes launches sent straight onto escape trajectories, such as the lunar Apollo flights and planetary probes. GCAT counts a launch as successful or failed by its own long-standing rules; a handful of launches carry codes it does not classify, and we show those without an outcome.

Spacecraft are matched to Wikidata by their NORAD catalog number; crewed missions and crew members come from Wikidata and are matched to GCAT crewed vehicles by international designator or launch date. For people we publish only public professional facts: nationality, years, missions, time in space, agency and service.

Photos and portraits come from Wikimedia Commons under free licenses, with the author and license shown on every image and on the image credits page.

This page does not cover active satellites as a catalog; launch outcomes and orbits are historical records, and spacecraft status reflects the latest GCAT entry.

Data sources

• GCAT — General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects, Jonathan C. McDowell (CC BY 4.0)
• Wikidata — spacecraft names and descriptions, crewed missions, astronauts (CC0)
• Wikimedia Commons — spacecraft photos and astronaut portraits (free licenses, author credited on each image)

Questions, corrections or data requests: [email protected].