About this data
This list is the public record of rendezvous since 2014 with the detector’s finds merged in: every case the rendezvous project holds with its sources, stated to the precision they state, and every hold the detector raises from public element sets, in low Earth orbit since April 2026 and in the geostationary belt since October 2026.
A rendezvous is one catalogued object moving up beside another and staying there, as the rendezvous project finds it in Space-Track’s element sets every six hours. It goes by stages, each read from one set: same plane, once the one that moved has brought its orbit within a tenth of a degree of the other’s plane; same height, once its orbit is within 5 km of the other’s height; beside, once a set puts the two within 100 km of each other and still within 100 km a day later with no further manoeuvre; confirmed, once the next set agrees; and left, once the one that moved has taken its orbit more than 5 km from the other’s height, or a set puts the two more than 200 km apart a day later. In the geostationary belt, where every orbit shares the plane and nothing drags, there is no plane stage: the first stage is the one that moved stopping its drift along the belt at the other’s longitude, within 2 km of its height; beside, confirmed and left are read the same way.
Nearest is the least distance the detector read between the two, worked out from public element sets, which are good to about a kilometre: a distance under a kilometre is shown as under 1 km.
The detector never raises two objects from one launch or of one owner, a crewed station’s visitors, a stack still coming apart, fragments, or one object under two numbers; the public record shows such a pair where a source states it. Owners come from GCAT, by Jonathan McDowell: in words where the project publishes the owner’s name, else by GCAT’s code, with the owner’s state.
Every rendezvous has a report status. Reported means a public source other than Orbinauts names the two, with how many do. No report yet means the detector found them less than 90 days ago and no source has named them so far. Unreported means 90 days have passed since the detector found them with no source naming them: its page stays and says so, and it turns Reported the day a report lands.
Of the rendezvous the detector found in low Earth orbit more than 90 days ago, 0 of 3 have been reported by someone else since; on those reported, the detector was first by a median of 38 hours. Of the rendezvous the detector found in the geostationary belt, none is 90 days old yet.
Announced means an operator has said what the rendezvous was, and links its statement. No operator statement means the project looked and neither operator has said anything. A rendezvous with neither has not been checked yet.
Nothing here says why a rendezvous happened or what either side meant by it: only who moved, how close and for how long, and what the operators and others have said.
Detectors beside-v5 and belt-v1, last run Nov 8, 2026 at 12:23 PM UTC.