| LEO | MEO | GEO | HEO | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image sharpness | High | Low | Low | Low |
| Latency | Very low | Medium | High (± 0.25 s one way) | High |
| Satellites needed for continuous coverage | Hundreds to thousands | ± 24–30 | 3 (excluding poles) | 2–3 per hemisphere |
| Polar coverage | Yes (with polar inclination) | Yes | No | Yes (one hemisphere) |
| Loss per satellite | Small (many satellites) | Medium | Large | Large |
In recent years military thinking has shifted towards proliferated LEO: instead of a few large, expensive satellites, hundreds of smaller, cheaper ones. Losing one then matters little — an opponent has to take out very many. Examples are Starlink and Starshield (see the Drone Academy) and the American Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture of the Space Development Agency, with a transport layer (data links) and a tracking layer (missile detection).
Resilience through numbers ("disaggregation") is a military choice: it makes a constellation less vulnerable to ASAT weapons, but increases the number of objects in space — and with it the risk of collisions and debris.
How big such a constellation is can be seen live on the Orbital Radar Starlink tracker or in the N2YO Starlink category (see 10.6).