If the goal was truly to discourage the action, the obvious thing to do would have been to require the company to de-orbit, or otherwise forfeit the use of, the

If the goal was truly to discourage the action, the obvious thing to do would have been to require the company to de-orbit, or otherwise forfeit the use of, the satellites. If the company had sufficient funding the message received would have been 'well, we better not do that again'. If it didn't have sufficient funding, that would have been the message to all the companies that came after. The fine barely represents a speeding ticket and signals to anyone else that there will be effectively no action if they do the same thing in the future.