In a more typical accounting system, You would divide the cost of replacement by the lifespan and get that the satellite "costs" 20 million per year, but only earns 1 million the first year, leading to a net loss of 19 million.
With EBITDA, you treat the satellite as a fixed up front cost and then year 1 comes and you made a million dollars! You're in the green! Year 2, you made 1.1 million! Up and to the right we go!
This works great until year 6 when the satellite needs replacement. But with fancy accounting magic, you put the capital costs to replace into a different bucket and can claim that your satellites are money printing machines!