How many satellites are in orbit above the earth?

I can find general information on this subject, in fact a few sites are listed below, but no where can I find a complete listing of how many are up there.

Many we know about, communications, military,media and experimental, but how many are there that we don't know about,? and what are their purpose?

Can NASA or some other agency monitor all of them? If the answer to that is no, then isn't the security of the world as huge risk?

orbits.esa.int...
science.nasa.gov...
science.nasa.gov...

Shoulden't we be doing more to find out exactly what is up there and what the are up to?

wile I canot tell you how manny are up there this much you know already when nasa lunches the shuttel it must keep track of over 4,000 pices of junk so as the shuttle hits none wile in orbite stuff from a metal chip to a screw or canster Its becoming a reagular junk yard up there.
now as to working hardware its proble over 4000 by its self and may be as high as 10,000 after all on anygiven day on earth there are usaly alest one rocket being lunched with more hardware on it and durning the good times it can be 10 or 12 going up a day on earth and we have been doing this steadly from the late 70des . so if you averge even 1 a day for 30 years that comes up to 10,000 not including the good days.
Ps very rarly do a day go by that a rocket isent lunched by eather the US ,russia,china and one or two from other places.

there is believed to be about 9000 in orbit. how many of those actually work im not too sure. also around 20,000 to 30,000 have actually been launched so a heck of a lot have burnt up in the atmosphere or gone off-course and travel far in to space. also orbiting is tonnes and tonnes of debris left behind by past missions, if we do ever live on the moon or mars then im sure we'll manage to f**k those up just as much as we have our own planet.

U2U me in a month. I'll be at Northrop Grumman's Ground Based-Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance (GEODSS) site in Diego Garcia. It's a big telescope who's job is to track man-made objects in space.

What possible reason is there to have 9000 satellites floating around? I sure some are there for less than honest purposes, What happens when one is no longer of any use? Does it just float aimlessly in orbit until it losses is path, are any of the big enough to cause damage if they came crashing down to earth, or would they all burn up in the atmosphere?

This might be a stupid question too but. What if one of these floaters were in the direct path of the shuttle or a rocket in a launch, woulden't the impact be enough to cause the shuttle or rocket to crash?

Originally posted by jeeze louise
What possible reason is there to have 9000 satellites floating around? I sure some are there for less than honest purposes, What happens when one is no longer of any use? Does it just float aimlessly in orbit until it losses is path, are any of the big enough to cause damage if they came crashing down to earth, or would they all burn up in the atmosphere?

This might be a stupid question too but. What if one of these floaters were in the direct path of the shuttle or a rocket in a launch, woulden't the impact be enough to cause the shuttle or rocket to crash?

~~

somebody at ATS posted this site:
science.nasa.gov...

which is a lot more interesting than a list of launches & vehicles

check out the band of 'communications' satellites in GeoSync orbit
then check the mess of low-orbit 'BB' like things within the ideal low-orbit zone

this nasa page along with the applet will be worth your while to investigate/visit/explore....

? when they are no-longer-useful....they become SPACE JUNK!
so much flotsam & jetsom that will need to be removed sometime by someone....maybe the UN will grow up & address this instead of meddling & providing opportunity to abuse food-for-oil misappropriations/graft $$

?launching into this space-based-mine-field??
tracking & computers & advanced rocketry & navigation systems
probably with 'hardened' composites that make up the new generation satellites or shuttles, helps to lessen any damage the old 'debris' might cause...besides any space junk is still traveling at 'orbit insertion' speed
which will be the same speed as the new stuff just going into orbit.
---> or something like ....just like getting on a freeway...!!