The week in orbit · 2–8 November 2026 (UTC)
2–8 Nov: FLEX (ESA) is holding station about 65 km from SENTINEL 3A (EU), COSMOS 2612 (Russia) is holding station about 536 km from ICEYE-X36 (USA) and a possible breakup, with 4 new pieces catalogued from launch 2026-227 (W-SERIES 8 and 99 more) (launched 2026).
Top stories
- Shadowing another country's satellite
Holding a steady distance in another satellite's orbit takes deliberate station-keeping. Same orbit plane and height, at a steady distance, since 28 Oct or before.
- Shadowing another country's satellite
Holding a steady distance in another satellite's orbit takes deliberate station-keeping. Same orbit plane and height, at a steady distance, since 27 Oct or before.
- Possible breakup
New pieces from an old launch can mean something broke up, or old debris catalogued late. A burst of new pieces from an old launch usually means something broke up recently, or that older debris was only now catalogued..
- Possible breakup
New pieces from an old launch can mean something broke up, or old debris catalogued late. A burst of new pieces from an old launch usually means something broke up recently, or that older debris was only now catalogued..
- Military satellite left public tracking
Its public orbit updates stopped. That says nothing about radio contact.
Military satellites that changed orbit
37Confirmed by the next public orbit update, so a change late in the week can arrive up to a day after it.
- 18 changes · 12 satellites
USA - 17 changes · 13 satellites
China - 9 changes · 6 satellites
Russia - 2 changes · 1 satellite
France - 1 change · 1 satellite
Germany - 1 change · 1 satellite
UK - 1 change · 1 satellite
South Korea - 1 change · 1 satellite
Egypt - 1 change · 1 satellite
Japan
Biggest move
Closed in all week
2Pairs found closing on 4 or more days, never more than 5% further apart than the day before and at least 10% nearer at the end, with the distance at each day's check. Usually routine: satellites in the same orbit drift past each other.
Shadowing another country's satellite
2Satellites in the same orbit plane and height as another country's satellite, holding a steady distance from it rather than drifting past.
Geostationary moves
3Launches
7Re-entries
0None reported this week.
What’s new on overhead24
- Satellite histories: Each satellite and pair page now sums up what overhead24 has logged about it in the last 90 days, including orbit changes, close approaches, and who is parked next to it in the geostationary belt.
- Satellite alerts by email: Watch up to 5 satellites from their pages and get one email on any day one of them changes orbit, closes on another, moves along the geostationary belt or stops updating.
- Daily Bitcoin stamps: Each day, everything overhead24 recorded is fingerprinted and timestamped in Bitcoin, so anyone can check what we found and when.
- overhead24 on Bluesky: Each morning's brief headline is posted at @overhead24.com on Bluesky.
Every change: what’s new.
Built 9 Nov, 22:00 UTC from the event log: what overhead24 detected that week, counted by fixed rules. Sources: Space-Track.org (USSPACECOM) (orbit data and re-entries); GCAT (J. McDowell, planet4589.org/space/gcat) (owners and military class, CC BY 4.0); Launch Library 2 (The Space Devs) (launches); UCDP (where fighting was recorded, CC BY 4.0). Worked out from public orbit data, accurate to within a few kilometres, and less accurate the older the data is. Not for collision avoidance, navigation or targeting. Satellites pass over every country: being overhead says nothing about what a satellite is doing. Each day in full: the daily brief. Spotted a mistake, or have a tip? Contact us.