You can spread out a given collection of N antennas as wide as you like to get better angular resolution, but you lose signal strength at the target. Radio astr

You can spread out a given collection of N antennas as wide as you like to get better angular resolution, but you lose signal strength at the target. Radio astronomers use big antennas and look for a long time. That doesn't work for communication. You can add more antennas, but those cost money. So, you use as many as you can afford, and space them out according to what you need. A too-broad antenna array on a satellite would have one set of problems, one on the ground others.