Satellite communication is getting more important in the coming 21st century because of its wide areas sevice capability, ease of access, and fast channel establishment. As such, satellite communication networks will be the basis of the global communication system in cooperation with the ground ATM networks. In this paper, we consider an efficient transmission methodology of ATM cells over the satellite communication channel. We first analyze possible bottlenecks and performance deterioration factors in the case, and then propose an enhanced cell trasmission mechanism. In order to use satellite channel for ATM cell transmission, the application of complicated channel coding is inevitable. However, the forwared error control such as convolutional encoding brings forth burst errors, which calls for the application of some kind of interleaving mechanism to randomize the burst errors at the receiver. Another aspect which should b econsidered in satellite communication system is the inherent transmission delay, which can be very considered in satellite communication system is te inherent transmission delay, which can be very critical to the delay-sensitive ATM traffic. Therefore, we propose that the processing delay at the block interleaving stage should be controlled propose a variable-size block interleaving mechanism which utilizes the predicted transmission delay for each traffic in the queues of the transmitter. According to the computer simulation, the proposed mechanism could improve the overall performance by drastically reducing the ATM cell drop rate owing to the excessive transmission delay.