The protected regions are two orbital zones internationally designated for debris-mitigation priority: LEO (up to 2,000 km altitude) and the GEO region (a ±200 km, ±15° band around the geostationary arc). Mitigation guidelines require missions to clear out of both at end of life.
Understanding Protected Regions
Why these two volumes, and not others
The regions codify a triage argument. LEO hosts the overwhelming majority of active satellites, all crewed platforms and the densest debris population — and its shells interact, since anything crossing 2,000 km of altitude sweeps through every layer below its apogee as it decays. GEO is the opposite case: a resource of essentially zero volume (one altitude, one plane) and infinite persistence, where a single derelict drifts along the arc through every operator's neighbourhood for millennia. Both zones concentrate irreplaceable value; both punish neglect collectively. MEO, by contrast, is sparsely populated by hardened navigation constellations with room to retire in place, and disposal orbits are the designated sacrifice zones. The line-drawing is pragmatic rather than principled — and under strain, as graveyard populations grow, transfer traffic multiplies, and proposals circulate to extend protection or add regions as the economy climbs to new altitudes.
From guideline to licence condition
The protected regions began as soft law — IADC technical consensus, endorsed through UN COPUOS guidelines that bind no one directly. Their force arrives through national regulators, who write the regions' requirements into the licences every commercial mission needs: demonstrate your disposal plan clears the protected region on the required timeline, with the required probability of success, or fly nothing. That transmission mechanism converted engineering etiquette into market structure — disposal reliability became a design requirement, propellant reserves a licensing line-item, and the compliance statistics (what fraction of GEO retirees actually reach compliant graveyards, what share of LEO missions clear on time) into the standing scorecard of how seriously the world takes its own rules. The regions also anchor harder conversations: anti-satellite-test norms and mega-constellation licensing debates both lean on the protected-region framework as the definition of the commons being damaged.