juliensimon/space-agency-database

Space Agency Database

Credit: NASA/GSFC/Suomi NPP

Part of a dataset collection on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

Database of space agencies and related governmental space organizations worldwide, sourced from Wikidata.

From NASA and Roscosmos to emerging national programs in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, this dataset catalogs every governmental space agency and related intergovernmental organization known to Wikidata. It covers founding dates, headquarters locations, leadership, annual budgets (where available), workforce sizes, and official websites.

The dataset enables comparative analysis of national space programs, tracking the globalization of space activity, and identifying investment patterns across the space sector. It complements the spacecraft-database (what each agency has flown) and the astronaut-database (who has flown for them).

Sourced from Wikidata's structured knowledge base using the Q31855 (space agency) class hierarchy plus a supplementary label-based filter for programs not yet formally classified. Data is community-curated and updated continuously.

This dataset is suitable for tabular classification tasks.

Schema

Column	Type	Description	Sample	Null %
wikidata_id	str	Wikidata entity ID (e.g. 'Q23548' for NASA); resolves to https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q23548 — links to the agency's full knowledge graph entry including founding date, budget history, and program list	Q19606251	0.0%
name	string	Official agency name in English (e.g. 'NASA', 'ESA', 'ISRO', 'Roscosmos'); canonical form as recorded in Wikidata	Academy of Aerospace Liquid Propulsio...	0.0%
country	string	Country or intergovernmental organization that operates the agency (e.g. 'United States', 'European Union'); uses full English name	People's Republic of China	6.4%
founded	str	Date the agency was formally established, ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD); null if only a founding year is known (see founded_year)	1999-01-01	37.1%
headquarters	string	City or region where the agency's primary administrative office is located (e.g. 'Washington, D.C.', 'Paris'); null if not recorded in Wikidata	Chang'an District	70.7%
budget_usd	float64	Most recently recorded annual operating budget converted to US dollars; null for agencies that do not publicly disclose budget figures; values are point-in-time and may lag by several years	700000000.0	99.3%
employees	Int64	Most recently recorded staff headcount (full-time equivalents); null if workforce data is absent from Wikidata	180	96.4%
website	string	Official agency website URL (e.g. 'https://www.nasa.gov'); null if not recorded in Wikidata	http://www.aaspt.net/index.asp	19.3%
founded_year	Int64	Integer year extracted from founded; enables numeric filtering when full date is unavailable; null only if founding date is entirely unknown	1999	37.1%

Quick stats

• 140 space agencies from 37 countries
• Oldest agency: National Aerospace Laboratory (1919)
• Largest budget: Spanish Space Agency ($700M)
• 1 agencies with budget data, 5 with employee counts
• Top countries: United States (31), France (21), People's Republic of China (8), Germany (7), India (7)

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/space-agency-database", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/space-agency-database", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Agencies by country
print(df["country"].value_counts().head(10))

# Agencies with known budgets, sorted descending
budget_df = df.dropna(subset=["budget_usd"]).sort_values("budget_usd", ascending=False)
print(budget_df[["name", "country", "budget_usd"]].head(10))

# Agencies founded after 2000 (new space era)
new_era = df[df["founded_year"] >= 2000].sort_values("founded_year")
print(new_era[["name", "country", "founded_year"]])

# Founding timeline
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
df.dropna(subset=["founded_year"]).hist("founded_year", bins=30)
plt.xlabel("Year Founded")
plt.ylabel("Count")
plt.title("Space Agency Founding Timeline")
plt.show()

Data source

https://www.wikidata.org/

Related datasets

• juliensimon/spacecraft-database

• juliensimon/gcat-launch-vehicles

• juliensimon/astronaut-database

If you find this dataset useful, please consider giving it a like on Hugging Face. It helps others discover it.

About the author

Created by Julien Simon — AI Operating Partner at Fortino Capital. Part of the Space Datasets collection.

Citation

@dataset{space_agency_database,
  title = {Space Agency Database},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/space-agency-database},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}

License

CC0-1.0