
Three big ones is probably the way to go to get the bandwidth back to earth. They wouldn't need to be stationary either as long as they were 120 degrees apart in the same orbit, that orbit could be anything you choose. Tracking satellites is a solved problem.
If you could live with short breaks, you could probably stick two in a really high orbit at 180 degree separation. You've got the communication delay to factor in anyway, so you could probably live with that.
( , Tue 21 Jul 2020, 20:31, Reply)

And I'd want a further 9 for redundancy. :D
( , Tue 21 Jul 2020, 21:11, Reply)