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What is a satellite assembly? Satellite assemblies are assemblies that are used to deploy language and culture specific resources for an application. In an application, a separate product ID is assigned to each language and a satellite assembly is installed in a language specific sub-directory.
An assembly is a collection of types and resources that are built to work together and form a logical unit of functionality. Assemblies take the form of executable (.exe) or dynamic link library (. dll) files, and are the building blocks of . NET applications.
The Global Assembly Cache (GAC) is a folder in Windows directory to store the . NET assemblies that are specifically designated to be shared by all applications executed on a system. Assemblies can be shared among multiple applications on the machine by registering them in global Assembly cache(GAC).
An assembly manifest contains all the metadata needed to specify the assembly's version requirements and security identity, and all metadata needed to define the scope of the assembly and resolve references to resources and classes.
A definition from MSDN says something like this: "A .NET Framework assembly containing resources specific to a given language. Using satellite assemblies, you can place the resources for different languages in different assemblies, and the correct assembly is loaded into memory only if the user elects to view the application in that language."
This means that you develop your application in a default language and add flexibility to react with change in the locale. Say, for example, you developed your application in an en-US locale. Now, your application has multilingual support. When you deploy your code in, say, India, you want to show labels, messages shown in the national language which is other than English.
Satellite assemblies give this flexibility. You create any simple text file with translated strings, create resources, and put them into the bin\debug folder. That's it. The next time, your code will read the CurrentCulture property of the current thread and accordingly load the appropriate resource.
A satellite assembly is a compiled library (DLL) that contains “localizable” resources specific to a given culture such as strings, bitmaps, etc.
You are likely to use satellite assemblies when creating a multilingual UI application. They are used to deploy applications in multiple cultures, with 1 satellite assembly per culture (default behavior)
More here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/global_developer/archive/2011/07/22/introduction-to-satellite-assemblies.aspx
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