Medium Earth Orbit
Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) is a type of orbit around Earth that lies between the low Earth orbit (LEO) and the geostationary orbit (GEO). Satellites in MEO have an altitude between 2,000 and 35,786 kilometers and a period of revolution between 2 and 24 hours. MEO is commonly used for navigation, communication, and remote sensing applications. The most well-known MEO satellite constellation is the Global Positioning System (GPS), which consists of 24 satellites in six orbital planes with a period of 12 hours. Other examples of MEO satellites include the Galileo and BeiDou navigation systems, as well as some satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS) for GPS. MEO offers advantages over LEO and GEO in terms of coverage, accuracy, and signal strength, but also has some drawbacks such as higher latency and susceptibility to radiation.
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