High Earth orbit
Above the geostationary belt lies the high frontier — and the space industry's parking lot. HEO includes the graveyard orbits where end-of-life satellites are deliberately moved to keep the operational belts clear.
What is high Earth orbit?
// the factsHEO is everything beyond the geostationary belt. There is no hard boundary, but the region above ~35,786 km is generally classed as high Earth orbit — sparsely populated, with long orbital periods that can stretch to days.
It contains the graveyard. Geostationary satellites at end of life are boosted a few hundred kilometres above the operational belt into a disposal orbit, where they can circle for centuries without colliding with working spacecraft. That makes HEO part museum, part landfill.
Mostly quiet, but not empty. A few science and relay missions use highly elliptical orbits that swing far beyond GEO, and the disposed hardware accumulates slowly. The catalogue below lists what is tracked there.