Hmm, that's very strange, as I use that feature daily while playing/developing and have not encountered this issue.
Do you have any other mods present by chance?
Do you encounter this error if you have only space-age (and quality and elevated-rails) and this mod installed (i.e. no other mods present other than this one)?
Also, contextually speaking, what were you doing at the time leading up to using Satellite mode? I ask, as the error seems to be potentially occurring because either the LuaPlayer object or the LuaPlayer's character object (thinking it's this one) are invalid, given the line it's occurring on:
player.set_controller({ type = defines.controllers.character, character = player_data.character_data.character })