Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is the region of space within 160 to 2,000 kilometers above Earth's surface. It is the most accessible orbital regime and hosts the International Space Station, the vast majority of Earth observation satellites, and mega-constellations like SpaceX Starlink and OneWeb. LEO offers low latency for communications and high-resolution imaging but requires frequent station-keeping due to atmospheric drag.
Objects in LEO complete one orbit roughly every 90 minutes at velocities near 7.8 km/s. The relatively low delta-v required to reach LEO makes it the default destination for most launch vehicles, and payload-to-LEO capacity is the standard benchmark for comparing rocket performance.