• Question: How much do satilites cost to build

    Asked by Matacton to Camilla, Dan, Katie, Mike, Rhys on 17 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Katie Sparks

      Katie Sparks answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      Satellites cost a lot to design and build and even more to launch.
      Well, they do here because we make huge satellites that are very specialist. The example I can think of is Gaia: It’s a really accurate space telescope, it has a 1billion (1000 000 000) pixel camera, will look at a billion stars and cost about a billion to design, build and get into space (in total, not each).

    • Photo: Camilla Weiss

      Camilla Weiss answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      At the other end of the scale to Katie my company specialises in smaller, lower cost satellites – they cost on average between 5-20 million pounds. os of this cost goes towards the launch though – i costs a lot in fuel to get a satellite into orbit which is why we quite often share rockets with other satellites. A tiny cubesat can cost as little as£100,000.

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