Every satellite runs on sunlight. This page adds up the solar arrays of the world's satellite constellations to estimate how much electrical power is in orbit today, which operators hold it, whether it is generated on silicon or gallium-arsenide cells, and who built the arrays.
Summing the beginning-of-life array power of every satellite currently in orbit across the tracked constellations gives the figure below. It is an estimate: public sources give satellite counts reliably, but array power per satellite is published for only a few designs and has to be inferred from mass and class for the rest.
Solar array power in orbit by operator, October 2026
Megawatts of beginning-of-life array power on satellites currently in orbit. Operators grouped across their constellations.
Share of solar power in orbit, by operator
Percent of total beginning-of-life array power in orbit, October 2026.
Planned solar power by operator
Megawatts of array power implied by announced constellation sizes, excluding orbital data-centre concepts and the unapproved Starlink Gen3 filing.
Cell technology behind the power in orbit
Share of beginning-of-life array power, and share of constellations, by solar cell technology. "Pipeline" is planned power excluding orbital data-centre concepts.
Largest GaAs-powered constellations in orbit
Megawatts of beginning-of-life array power, October 2026.
For most constellations the satellite prime builds its own arrays. A few buy from merchant array suppliers. This section lists only entries that have been confirmed; the rest of the register shows a blank until a source is found.
| Constellation | Operator | Array manufacturer | Cell | MW in orbit | MW planned |
|---|
Every tracked constellation. Click a row for notes and sources, a column header to sort.
| Constellation | Operator | Country | Status | Cell | Arrays | Planned | Launched | In orbit | kW/sat | MW in orbit | MW planned |
|---|
Satellites in orbit are launched to date minus reentered, lost or retired, per constellation, from Jonathan McDowell's catalogue and NewSpace Index. Power in orbit is satellites in orbit multiplied by an assumed beginning-of-life array power per satellite. Crew and cargo vehicles are excluded. Where a programme spans several rows (OneWeb Gen1 and Gen2, ICEYE fleet and expansion), the satellites are counted once.
Published figures are used where they exist. Otherwise the value is a rough-order-of-magnitude engineering estimate from satellite mass and class, marked "ROM" in the notes: Starlink V1 5 kW, V2 Mini 20 kW, V3 60 kW; Guowang ~4 kW; Qianfan ~2.5 kW; O3b mPOWER 10 kW. Classified payloads are not tracked.
"Silicon" means silicon arrays of the Starlink type. "GaAs" means multi-junction III-V cells, the standard for GEO, MEO, institutional and most smallsat missions. Classification follows operator or manufacturer statements; "mixed / unknown" is used where neither exists.
They are not measured power. Arrays degrade, satellites point away from the sun, and some are not operational. The figures should be read as installed capacity at launch, to within perhaps ±30% for the total and considerably more for individual small constellations.
André Radloff (2026) – "Power in Orbit: solar array power of satellite constellations". Data as of 11 October 2026. Retrieved from the Power in Orbit tracker.
Charts and data on this page may be reused under CC BY 4.0 with attribution. Third-party source data carries its own terms.
Power in Orbit is an independent, personal project by André Radloff, Berlin. It is not affiliated with any satellite operator, manufacturer or supplier named on this page, and it carries no advertising. The figures are estimates assembled from public sources and updated monthly.
Corrections, better data and confirmed array suppliers are welcome: hello@powerinorbit.com. If you can point to a published figure for a satellite's array power, it will replace the estimate.