YFarmX Space · Orbit desk

Orbit

Orbital traffic, debris and the rules of the road above Earth. Who is flying what, where it is, and how crowded the useful orbits are becoming.

The hardware

Modular space station

Four pressurised modules on a spine, a 44 m truss carrying four solar wings and radiators, a cupola, a robotic arm and a docked cargo craft.

Four pressurised modules docked along a spine, a ring, hatch and capture guides at every join
Rotary joints at the truss ends turn the four solar wings; the radiators stand at right angles so the two never shade each other
A robotic arm on a mobile base reaches over the spine, and a faceted cupola hangs below
A visiting cargo craft is docked at the far module's nadir port

Class: Stations
Built scale: 59 m wing tip to wing tip · 44 m truss
Where the class lives: Low Earth orbit, about 400 km up
Geometry: 51,080 triangles, modelled as real parts

Flying today: the International Space Station, 109 m end to end, and China's Tiangong. The model is the class, not either of them.

Orbit desk →Missions desk →

Illustration · class archetype · real geometry

Missions on this desk · 3

An unofficial illustration of the completed Tiangong station with spacecraft docked, restyled onto a dark starfield.

Tiangong space station

orbital operations

CMSA (China Manned Space Agency) · Low Earth orbit

China's station is in continuous crewed operation; the Shenzhou-21 to Shenzhou-23 handover completed in May 2026.

China's Tiangong station remains in continuous crewed operation. The programme's official site records the in-orbit handover between the Shenzhou-21 and Shenzhou-23 crews, described as the eighth crew gathering in Chinese spaceflight history, completed on 28 May 2026, with the returning Shenzhou-21 crew of three arriving in Beijing on 30 May 2026 for medical checks and recuperation. The English-language site's ticker carries the station's orbital parameters dated 27 July 2026, confirming routine operations today.

last verified 2026-08-07 · Illustration: Shujianyang, Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, restyled

Full record →

Haven-1

development

Vast · Low Earth orbit

Vast's single-module commercial station, built for four-person visits, targets a 2027 Falcon 9 launch with structure testing well advanced.

Vast's Haven-1, a single-module commercial station designed for four-person, two-week missions, is targeted to launch in 2027 on a SpaceX Falcon 9, with crews arriving by Dragon. The primary structure has completed welding, pressure and load testing, docking hardware fit checks were finished in October 2025, and the Vast Control Unit flight computer entered electromagnetic compatibility testing in April 2026 as integration continues at Long Beach. Vast's Haven Demo pathfinder satellite, launched in November 2025, achieved mission success and was deorbited in February 2026.

Next: Launch targeted for 2027 on a SpaceX Falcon 9, with crew transported by Dragon

last verified 2026-08-06 · Images courtesy of Vast

Full record →

International Space Station

orbital operations

NASA / Roscosmos / ESA / JAXA / CSA · Low Earth orbit

Expedition 75 has been aboard since late July 2026 under commander Jessica Meir. The station operates through 2030, with a SpaceX-built deorbit vehicle contracted for the end.

Expedition 75 began aboard the International Space Station on 26 July 2026 under NASA commander Jessica Meir, and NASA states it will run until spring 2027. NASA introduced the incoming Crew-13 team on 3 August 2026, targeting launch no earlier than 12 September. The agency's transition plan commits to operating the station through 2030, and in June 2024 NASA awarded SpaceX a contract worth up to $843 million to build the US Deorbit Vehicle, a modified Dragon that NASA will own and operate to perform the station's final controlled re-entry.

Next: SpaceX Crew-13 launch, no earlier than 12 September 2026

last verified 2026-08-08 · Image: NASA, restyled

Full record →

Desk openFirst stories publish as sourcing clears

Coverage of orbital traffic starts here.

Follow this desk for the wire; the records above are already live and every one carries the date it was last verified.

YFarmX Space home Satellites desk Security desk RSS feed

More desks

SatellitesThe infrastructure surrounding Earth SecurityThreats to spacecraft and infrastructure DataSourced numbers and structured datasets