This day 50 years ago a human being made the first flight into the outer space. It was a Soviet cosmonaut – Yuri Gagarin. 
Nowadays we can often hear that Russia lost its leadership in space activities.

We got down to facts and learned what country has now the most satellites and is a heavy space litterer. 

As of April 5, 2011, CelesTrak reports, leadership in quantity of orbiting satellites belongs to the CIS and USA.
To sharpen visualization, we substituted Russia for CIS.

This quantity includes commercial, military and all the rest of satellites. Though Dr. T.S. Kelso explained that not more than a third of orbital missions are operating, the outcome is quite predictable. Russia and USA left all the other counties in more than ten times.

Let us now take a glance at the heaviest space litterers. Space debris as classified by CelesTrak is spent rocket stages, parts of broken satellites and other debris.

If in absolute figures of space debris, Russian and USA are leaders as well, and it is no wonder. Many launches brings much debris. Therefore, another indicator is of interest: Units of debris per 1 on-orbit satellite, that is to say quality of launches.

What country is renowned for its low quality products? Right, it is China. And space turns out no exception.
China has almost 33 fragments per 1 satellite. It is ten times more than USA or Russia has. France has also produced good few pieces of debris: 9 fragments per 1 on-orbit satellite.

Japan is one the most “neat” countries. 124 satellites yielded only 0.6 fragments per unit. 

Interactive visualization on a datapult.info  site offers other indicators as well http://www.datapult.info/en/content/satellites-orbit-and-debris-1957-2011

The information for this research courtesy of CelesTrak.
We would like to express our special thanks to Dr. T.S. Kelso for his invaluable help in preparing this visualization.