| Civil | civilian government organizations (e.g., NASA, JAXA, ESA) |
| Commercial | built by a private organization for itself, including amateur satellites. |
| Military | a government military organization, includes those built by a private contractor but for a government military organization. |
| University | a university or other educational institution (including high schools). To be in this class, student education must be part of the mission's core.
If the university is contracted to build a satellite, it falls under the commercial category. |
| Deorbited (D) | The spacecraft is not in orbit (either pre-launch, or it has de-orbited) |
| Active (A) | The spacecraft is in orbit and capable of all its baseline functions. |
| Semi-operational (S) | The spacecraft has one or more key functions disabled (e.g., no uplink, battery failure). |
| Launch Failure (L) | The spacecraft was lost during launch failure or was never properly launched. |
| Non-operational | No activity can be detected (still in orbit) |
| Not Available | No information available |
| Communications | The primary mission is to relay communications between two points. Amateur radio service and AIS tracking are common examples. |
| Educational | The primary mission is the educational/professional training of the participants in the spacecraft design lifecycle. To be and E-class mission any science returns or technology. |
| Earth Imaging | The mission is to return images of the Earth for commercial and/or research purposes. |
| Military | The mission has military relevance that does not properly fit in the other categories. |
| Science | The mission collects data for scientific research. To be S-class, there must be a clear connection between the data collected and end-user researchers. |
| Technology Demonstration | The mission involves the first flight of a new technology capability. As with S-class missions, it is not enough to simply try out some new technology in space; there must be
a clear process by which the behaviours of this new technology in orbit are validated |
| Launched (1) | The rocket began liftoff, most missions that stop at status 1 result in launch failures. |
| Deployed (2) | The spacecraft is confirmed to have released from the launch vehicle. Missions that end in status 2 were unable to detect activity after deployment. |
| Commissioning (3) | The spacecraft has had at least one uplink and downlink. |
| Primary op. (4) | The spacecraft is taking actions that achieve primary mission success (i.e., receiving commands, downlinking mission data) |
| Mission Success (5) | Primary mission objectives have been met. The spacecraft may or may not continue to operate, run secondary missions, etc. |