HawkEye 360, the company based in Herndon, Virginia, the space-based radio frequency data specialist has recently announced the opening of an advanced technology and development centre, which can potentially centralise all its data engineering and satellite manufacturing in-house facilities. The facility is located in Virginia, the 19,000-square foot manufacturing facility can support software development, data processing and manufacturing of the company’s commercial radio frequency sensing satellites which are used for gathering geospatial intelligence.
With the capacity to potentially house up to 70 employees, the facility will host data processing, constellation operations, software development, payload development and satellite assembly. The manufacturing facility also includes a clean room and an electronics lab for advanced radio frequency technology and manufacturing the smallsats. The company also enunciated that the facility will enable them to have end-to-end responsibility for the design and manufacturing of its satellites.
“This gives us more flexibility to adapt and innovate our commercial RF GEOINT technology,” said HawkEye 360 CEO John Serafini. “Our customers will benefit through our discoveries, as we place more sophisticated RF-sensing satellites into orbit and build algorithms that extract value from this important data. We are proud to be investing in the local economy with these high-paying, mission-focused jobs that make a global impact.”
HawkEye 360 also announces that it is expecting the launch of a sixth cluster of three satellites before the end of the year 2022, which is predicted to bring the tally of its total constellation to around 18 satellites, which support some of the major sectors such as defence, commercial, environmental and humanitarian applications. Recently, the company also won a $15.5 million Experimental Purpose Agreement (EPA) contract from the United States Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Space Vehicles Directorate.
“We are pleased to have the opportunity to explore at greater scale and depth, using real-world scenarios, how a leading radio frequency data and analytics provider such as HawkEye 360 can supplement and strengthen our hybrid satellite ISR architecture, and to develop new tactics, techniques and procedures to enable further utility assessments,” said AFRL Technical Program Manager Charlene Jacka.
