Is there a reason as to why satellite imagery is only shown when editing the map, and not available when viewing the map?
That’s how the satellite imagery is licensed to OSM.
For instance, Bing Maps page explain the terms of use as:
Please note the only legal use of Bing maps is to use the aerial imagery layer as background to do your own OSM drawing (also known as “tracing”).
See the wiki page Vertical Aerial Photographs for detailed information.
Part of the reason is that we only have a license for the OSM editors for mapping purposes and not for a map service.
However, in some regions there are open data aerial photographs (especially in the EU, due to EU law, which requires the official aerial photographs to be made available under a free license and via a public API), which could theoretically be used.
It seems most(if not all) image layers available in the editor are licensed such that they can only be used for OSM tracing. It’s a shame. Aerial photos available on the openstreetmap website would be nice to have! Thank you, hocu, and whb for your prompt replies.