Earth orbits are usually grouped into three buckets by altitude: LEO, MEO, and GEO. Each band has fundamentally different physics, costs, and use cases.
LEO: Low Earth Orbit
Altitude: roughly 160 km to 2,000 km. Orbital period: 90-120 minutes. Use cases: Earth observation, broadband constellations (Starlink, OneWeb), the International Space Station, most science missions.
LEO is close. That means:
- Signals make a fast round trip (typical latency ~20-40 ms vs ~600 ms for GEO)
- Imaging cameras can resolve small features without giant optics
- Launch is cheap relative to higher altitudes
- Each satellite only sees a small area, so global coverage requires constellations of dozens to thousands
- Atmospheric drag is non-trivial. Satellites below ~600 km need periodic reboosting or they re-enter within a few years
MEO: Medium Earth Orbit
Altitude: 2,000 km to 35,786 km. Orbital period: several hours. Use cases: Global navigation constellations (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou), some communications operators (SES O3b mPOWER).
MEO is the navigation band. Visibility from any point on Earth’s surface to at least four satellites at a time (needed for trilateration) is achievable with ~24-30 satellites. Latency sits between LEO and GEO. Most regional broadband players have skipped MEO in favour of LEO, with SES being the notable exception.
GEO: Geostationary Orbit
Altitude: 35,786 km (a specific value, the radius where orbital period exactly matches Earth’s 23h 56min sidereal rotation). Orbital period: 24 hours. Use cases: Direct-to-home television (Dish, DirecTV), weather satellites (GOES, Himawari, Meteosat), fixed-pointing communications.
A GEO satellite appears fixed over a single equatorial spot. That means:
- Ground antennas don’t have to track. A fixed dish works
- One satellite covers about a third of the planet
- Latency is high (~600 ms round trip)
- Launch is expensive, satellites are large, and the GEO arc is finite (a regulated resource, only so many slots above the equator)
The new “between” bands
The traditional three-bucket model is fraying. New constellations sit deliberately in the high-LEO / low-MEO gap (e.g., Inmarsat’s I-7s in inclined GEO, Telesat Lightspeed at 1,000-1,300 km). The boundaries are conventional, not physical. What matters is what physics the operator is exploiting.
For companies operating in each band, see the orbit tags: /tags/leo, /tags/meo, /tags/geo.