When you hear the word satellite, you might think of a remote object, traveling thousands

of miles away in space, impossibly far from any living thing. But here on Earth, a big part of our

economy depends on them.

People have no idea how much of their daily life is touched by satellites.

That's Rachel Jewett.

She's the managing editor of Via Satellite, a trade publication for the commercial satellite industry.

Cruise ships use satellites. John Deere uses satellites.

The government uses them.

All of the apps that you use that have GPS, like Uber or DoorDash, anything like that, that's using the GPS satellites.

The weather forecast, part of that is coming from satellite data.

Your broadcast TV, if you're on a cable network.

Getting these satellites up and working is a big job.

It involves a complex manufacturing process, rocket launches,

and a network of terminals and ground stations all over the world.

The satellite industry is $293 billion in size, and it's a huge portion of the global space

economy.

The business is also in the middle of a revolution.

In just the past five years, the number of active satellites in orbit has more than quadrupled, and the

economics of building and launching them have changed astronomically.

In the traditional model, you're building one satellite that might cost hundreds of millions

of dollars. The cost of launching new satellites

is less than a million dollars, and they can get a lot more satellites on a bucket.

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