Science

HAWK-10B

SIGINT / RF geolocation · HawkEye 360

HAWK-10B is the second-third of HawkEye 360's tenth radio-frequency-geolocation cluster, launched alongside its two siblings on SpaceX's Transporter-11 mission on August 16, 2024. Like its formation-mates, it's built on a 30-kilogram DEFIANT microsatellite bus and carries a software-defined radio front end that listens for terrestrial and maritime radio emissions. Flying as a trio with tightly controlled relative spacing is the whole point: to geolocate an RF signal from space, you need at least three receivers spread apart to triangulate it, the same principle used by ground-based direction-finding stations but done from orbit at global scale. This cluster brought HawkEye 360's constellation to 30 operational satellites since the company's first Pathfinder trio launched in 2018, and every one of them built by SFL remains in operation—a strong reliability record for a company whose core business is spotting ships running dark, tracking emergency beacons, and mapping who's using what part of the radio spectrum, worldwide, commercially.