As part of "New Space", low Earth orbit megaconstellations are gaining increasing popularity as the instrument of delivering broadband internet from space. Apart from technical requirements, the necessity of lowering satellite communication costs to provide access to everyone will be the key to success. This article introduces a techno-economic assessment of the costs of constellation ownership and costs of service delivery to the customer. Based on the tradespace exploration of our framework, we identified key performance indicators and their techno-economic relationship. We observed that the best costper- capacity performance was achieved by many low-complexity satellites in low orbits. Therefore, valuable insight can be offered to further understand and guide design choices in such vast and complex systems.    «

As part of "New Space", low Earth orbit megaconstellations are gaining increasing popularity as the instrument of delivering broadband internet from space. Apart from technical requirements, the necessity of lowering satellite communication costs to provide access to everyone will be the key to success. This article introduces a techno-economic assessment of the costs of constellation ownership and costs of service delivery to the customer. Based on the tradespace exploration of our framework, w...    »