LEO (low Earth orbit)
Low Earth orbit (LEO) is the region of space from about 160 to 2,000 km above Earth's surface, where satellites circle the planet in roughly 90 minutes.
Most active satellites fly here — Starlink, the ISS and nearly every Earth-observation spacecraft — because it is cheap to reach and close enough for sharp imaging and low-latency links.
Objects in LEO move fast against the ground, so a given satellite is only overhead for a few minutes on each pass.
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Related terms
- MEO — Medium Earth orbit (MEO) is the band from about 2,000 km up to the geostationary altitude of 35,786 km, best known as the home of navigation satellites.
- GEO — Geostationary orbit (GEO) is the circular orbit 35,786 km above the equator where a satellite's period exactly matches Earth's rotation, so it appears fixed over one spot.
- Orbital period — The orbital period is the time a satellite takes to complete one full orbit, set almost entirely by its altitude.
- Sun-synchronous orbit — A sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) is a near-polar low Earth orbit tuned so the satellite passes over every location at the same local solar time on each visit.
