Orbital Expansion: Three New Satellites Join Virginia Firm's RF Network

Three commercial signals-intelligence satellites entered orbit from New Zealand on Thursday.

Rocket Lab fired an Electron rocket at 3:11 a.m. EDT, launching the payload from its facility in the country. The mission, designated "We're Not Hawking Around," carried three Hawk satellites built for Virginia-based HawkEye 360. The company now operates nearly 50 of these spacecraft in low Earth orbit.

The rocket targeted an altitude of 323 miles, or 520 kilometers, for the release of the new units. Once commissioned, the satellites will scan the planet for radio frequency emissions. HawkEye 360 stated that the spacecraft operate in clusters to collect data across the RF spectrum. The data supports maritime tracking, GNSS jamming detection, radar monitoring, communications mapping, and space defense.

The firm supplies this intelligence to the U.S. government and its allies. The company said its goal is to enable faster and better decision-making. It noted that its space-based collection and AI-powered analytics transform knowledge of the RF spectrum into a strategic advantage.

This launch followed a similar mission by just two days. Three other Hawk satellites flew on SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 rideshare earlier in the week. The latest flight was Rocket Lab's 98th launch overall and its 19th of 2026. Sixteen of the company's flights this year used the 59-foot-tall Electron rocket. The remaining three used HASTE, a suborbital variant for hypersonic testing.