juliensimon/spacecraft-database

Spacecraft Database

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Part of a dataset collection on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

Comprehensive database of spacecraft sourced from Wikidata — satellites, probes, space stations, and more — spanning the entire history of the Space Age.

From the earliest Sputnik satellites to modern mega-constellations and deep space probes, this dataset catalogs spacecraft across seven decades of spaceflight. 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.

This dataset is suitable for tabular classification tasks.

Schema

Column	Type	Description	Sample	Null %
wikidata_id	str	Wikidata entity ID (e.g. 'Q48371'); stable URI used for cross-referencing enrichment sources	Q80811	0.0%
name	string	Spacecraft name as recorded in Wikidata (e.g. 'Hubble Space Telescope', 'Sputnik 1', 'Starlink-1234')	Sputnik 1	0.0%
launch_date	str	ISO 8601 UTC launch date in YYYY-MM-DD format; null if the spacecraft has not yet launched or date is unknown	1957-10-04	16.1%
operator	string	Agency or organization operating the spacecraft (e.g. 'NASA', 'ESA', 'SpaceX', 'Roscosmos'); null if not recorded in Wikidata	Soviet Union	68.8%
manufacturer	string	Organization that built the spacecraft bus (e.g. 'Boeing', 'Lockheed Martin', 'Airbus'); null if not recorded	S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corpora...	73.3%
orbit_type	string	Orbital regime (e.g. 'LEO', 'GEO', 'heliocentric', 'lunar orbit', 'deep space'); null if orbital data not available in Wikidata	low Earth orbit	82.8%
mass_kg	Float64	Total spacecraft mass in kilograms at launch; null for ~90% of entries where Wikidata has no mass recorded	83.6	79.6%
mission	string	Associated mission name linked in Wikidata (e.g. 'Apollo program', 'Mars Science Laboratory'); null if no mission link recorded	Sputnik programme	80.1%
launch_year	float64	Year of launch derived from launch_date; null if launch_date is null; useful for time-series aggregation	1957.0	16.1%

Quick stats

• 8,875 total spacecraft in the database
• 7,444 spacecraft with a known launch date
• 1,812 spacecraft with a recorded mass
• 470 distinct operators
• 29 distinct orbital regimes
• Date range: 1957-10-04 to 2039-01-01
• Top operators: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (247), United States Air Force (153), Roscosmos State Corporation (129), Indian Space Research Organisation (113), European Space Agency (92)
• Top orbital regimes: geostationary orbit (594), low Earth orbit (402), Sun-synchronous orbit (237), medium Earth orbit (70), polar orbit (46)

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

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

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))

# Launches per year
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
df["launch_year"].dropna().astype(int).value_counts().sort_index().plot(kind="bar", figsize=(14, 4))
plt.xlabel("Year")
plt.ylabel("Spacecraft Launched")
plt.title("Spacecraft Launches Per Year")
plt.tight_layout()
plt.show()

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

Data source

https://www.wikidata.org/

Related datasets

• juliensimon/space-missions

• juliensimon/space-track-satcat

• juliensimon/launch-vehicles

If you find this dataset useful, please consider giving it a like on Hugging Face. It helps others discover it.

About the author

Created by Julien Simon — AI Operating Partner at Fortino Capital. Part of the Space Datasets collection.

Citation

@dataset{spacecraft_database,
  title = {Spacecraft Database},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/spacecraft-database},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}

License

CC0-1.0