How did a new satellites get in the right position?

Actually, if you jump up into the air you are in orbit around the center of the earth. Unfortunately, the perigee (lowest point) of your orbit is not far enough away from the center of the Earth to prevent you from impacting with the surface of the Earth.Getting an object into orbit is not that big a deal. Just give it enough velocity perpendicular to a line between it and the center of the Earth and it will achieve orbit. Now putting it in an orbit that you want it to maintain is substantially more difficult. A geostationary satellite would have to be moving at a speed of 3.1 km/s (6935 mph)in the direction of the earths rotation (west to east) at an altitude of 35,600 km (22,121 mi). (ABE) The geostationary orbit is always over the Equator.
You can get geosynchronous orbits that fly over the same longitude by ensuring the west-to-east component of the velocity is 3.1 km/s. The latitude would cycle between two extremes in each orbit. The altitude of that satellite would depend on the orbit inclination which would affect the total velocity.Edited by LinearAq, : correcting information

Actually, our group did just that by hitting it with another satellite...oops.Also, man-made satellites have issues like drag and gravitational variance that cause them to lose their proper orbital characteristics. Enough "fuel" is provided to correct the orbits for the length of the mission (actually 3X the mission length) with enough left over to send them to reentry or into a "parking" orbit that is out of the way.
Without this correction some of the LEO's (Low Earth Orbiters) could have an uncontrolled reentry.

He said new satellites and not new moons or planets so I assumed he was talking about man-made ones. Do you think he was asking the question because he is so blindingly ignorant of gravity that he thought he could trip someone up?All you need is the right velocity and proximity to a large enough mass relative to your own and, bang, you've established an orbit.I fail to see why this would be something that requires an omnipotent being to accomplish.Frankly, I thought he wanted to learn something about orbital dynamics.