I don't have any experience with telescopes or satellites but I can imagine that the cost of running a satellite in space is not just the cost of launching it.

I don't have any experience with telescopes or satellites but I can imagine that the cost of running a satellite in space is not just the cost of launching it. Everything after that is necessarily more complex and expensive: repairs, corrections of orbit/trajectory, availability windows if it's not geostationary, monitoring, protecting from debris, limited bandwidth, etc.