juliensimon/globalstar-fleet-data

Globalstar Constellation Fleet Data

Credit: NASA

Part of a dataset collection on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

Daily health snapshots of the Globalstar satellite constellation, derived from CelesTrak GP (General Perturbations) data. Tracks satellite count, hardware generation, and lifecycle status for the full ~85-satellite fleet.

Globalstar operates a LEO satellite-messaging and voice constellation at roughly 1,414 km altitude and 52 degrees inclination. Unlike Starlink and Kuiper broadband mega-constellations, Globalstar provides low-bandwidth services to handsets and IoT devices. The company achieved mainstream visibility through its partnership with Apple, which uses Globalstar satellites to power iPhone emergency SOS, satellite messaging, and roadside assistance in areas outside cellular coverage.

In April 2026, Amazon announced an approximately $11 billion agreement to acquire Globalstar, positioning the constellation as a direct handset-connectivity complement to Amazon's Project Kuiper broadband network. This dataset tracks the fleet's operational state through that transition and is designed to be analyzed alongside juliensimon/kuiper-fleet-data and juliensimon/starlink-fleet-data for a head-to-head view of the Bezos-vs-Musk LEO race.

The fleet spans four hardware generations: Gen1 (1998-2000 launches, mostly retired to graveyard orbit), Gen1R (2007 replacement units), Gen2 (2010-2013, current operational core), and Gen3 (2022+, first units of the Apple-funded replacement program).

This dataset is suitable for time-series forecasting, tabular classification tasks.

Schema

Column	Type	Description	Sample	Null %
date	datetime64[ns]	UTC date of the daily snapshot; one row per generation per date	2026-04-15 00:00:00	0.0%
generation	str	Hardware generation label: gen1 (1998-2000), gen1r (2007 replacements), gen2 (2010-2013), gen3 (2022+)	gen1	0.0%
total_count	int64	Total Globalstar objects in this generation tracked on this date	52	0.0%
operational_count	int64	Satellites within 100 km of the 1,414 km operational altitude	7	0.0%
graveyard_count	int64	Satellites boosted above operational altitude (>1,600 km), typically retired Gen1 hardware in graveyard orbit	36	0.0%
decaying_count	int64	Satellites below operational altitude (<1,300 km) with positive mean_motion_dot	0	0.0%
mean_altitude_km	float64	Mean altitude of satellites in this generation, kilometres above Earth's surface	1751.02	0.0%

Quick stats

• 28 Globalstar satellites tracked across 4 generations
• 24 operational, 2 in graveyard orbit, 0 decaying
• 17 daily snapshot rows (2026-04-15 to 2026-04-19)
• Acquired by Amazon in April 2026 as a complement to juliensimon/kuiper-fleet-data

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/globalstar-fleet-data", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

from datasets import load_dataset

gs = load_dataset("juliensimon/globalstar-fleet-data", split="train").to_pandas()

# Fleet composition by generation
print(gs.groupby("generation")[["total_count", "operational_count"]].sum())

# Operational satellites over time
print(gs.groupby("date")["operational_count"].sum().tail(10))

Data source

https://celestrak.org/

Update schedule

Daily at 08:30 UTC via GitHub Actions

Related datasets

• juliensimon/kuiper-fleet-data

• juliensimon/starlink-fleet-data

• juliensimon/constellation-census

• juliensimon/space-track-tle-history

• juliensimon/space-track-satcat

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{globalstar_fleet_data,
  title = {Globalstar Constellation Fleet Data},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/globalstar-fleet-data},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0