The pie chart depicts the number of spacecraft launched by different national governments from 1957 – 2007, while bar chart illustrates the purposes for each spacecraft launched.
Overall, the highest number of launched spacecraft came from Soviet/Russia, whereas the figure for Canada was the lowest rate. Additionally, the dominant percentage of total missions was observed in communication.
In the number of launched spacecraft, the Soviet Union/Russia had the largest number of with 3484, followed by the USA with 1760. Vietnam had about 539 launched spacecraft, which was twice as high as other countries, standing at 214. In contrast, the number of used spacecraft was nearly the same as in China and Japan, at around 111 and 114. In addition, the figure for the European Union had 285, compared to 48 from India and 28 from Canada.
In the purposes of the total mission, communications took up the highest percentage with above 50% among all categories, followed by nearly 20% from surveillance satellites. Likewise, the purposes for research was two times as high as planetary exploration, taking up at approximately 10% and 5%. Meanwhile, the proportion of manned space programs was higher than weather observation by around 2%.