HawkEye 360 Inc. recently announced their Clusters 4 and 5 satellites have started operations — these two, newest clusters have doubled on-orbit capacity to empower customers with actionable, global insights.
The expanded constellation can collect over a region of interest up to 16 times per day, with an average revisit of 1.5 hours using enhanced payloads, additional ground stations as well as optimized satellite management and data processing.
The commissioning of both sets of three satellites means the constellation now has a dozen of the nexgen satellites with enhanced payloads that began launching in 2021. The company has activated new ground stations in Chile, South Africa and New Zealand to download the increasing amounts of data and significantly reduce the time required to deliver data to our customers.
HawkEye 360 will continue rapidly growing the constellation to address clients increasing demands for RF Intelligence, aiming for a total of 60 satellites (20 clusters of three satellites). HawkEye 360’s sixth cluster of satellites is slated to launch on Rocket Lab’s inaugural Electron mission from Launch Complex 2 on Wallops Island, Virginia, no earlier than December of 2022.
“Our engineering team continues to achieve major technical milestones, including commissioning the Cluster 5 satellites about 10 weeks after being launched, a new record,” said HawkEye 360 COO, Rob Rainhart. “With all our improvements, HawkEye 360 has quadrupled daily RF data collection since the start of the year. The richness and density of these data sets is making RF activity clearer, allowing us to deliver new dimensions of global knowledge to our government and allied government partners that is tactically relevant and beneficial for national security and humanitarian needs.”
