Wendover Productions - How to Build a $100 Million Satellite

Short Summary

Main recommendation: If you want to buy a satellite, call the manufacturer, confirm you can afford a price in the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars, and expect a long back-and-forth before signing a contract. This video follows how SSL, a Palo Alto satellite maker owned by Maxar Technologies, builds, tests, launches, and commissions Telstar 19 VANTAGE for Telesat.

Key Points

• SSL builds about half of a satellite's components in-house and buys the rest, choosing based on which side performs better.
• Satellites are custom-designed for their coverage region, as with the antenna reflectors that direct signals to earth.
• Testing simulates launch and space conditions: vibration (60 to 90 seconds per test), thermal vacuum down to 10^-10 torr, and acoustic energy from speakers.
• The launch site depends on the orbit: polar orbits launch toward open ocean, while geosynchronous orbits launch eastward, which is why SpaceX uses Cape Canaveral.
• Telstar 19 VANTAGE launched July 22, 2018, on a Falcon 9 and is described as the heaviest commercial communications satellite to enter service, at 15,600 pounds.

Details Worth Noting

• Concrete instructions: If you want to buy a satellite, first call the manufacturer and check that your bank account can cover a price ranging from tens of millions to several hundred million dollars. Then expect an ongoing exchange in which you state what the satellite must do, the manufacturer returns a price, and a contract is signed if terms work out. Choose the launch provider yourself (such as SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, or Arianespace), since the launch site follows from the provider and the target orbit. Plan for transport by specialized container, by truck with lead and trailing escort vehicles for domestic routes, or by Antonov cargo plane for distant sites, arriving at the launch site at least a month before launch.
• Orbit determines launch direction: north-south polar orbits need open water to the north or south, and geosynchronous orbits (where the satellite moves west to east at Earth's rotation rate) launch in the same eastward direction as the orbit.
• After launch, the manufacturer commands the satellite, deploys solar arrays for power, and fires engines over about ten days to raise it from roughly 350 miles to 22,000 miles, followed by two to four weeks of testing before handover.
• The video notes that the customer, not the manufacturer, decides on the launch provider, and that SSL watches the satellite only until it separates from the rocket, about half an hour.

Bottom Line

Building and launching a commercial satellite is a multi-year process where most of the cost and risk lies in design, testing, and orbital placement, not in the launch itself.