HERNDON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HawkEye 360, Inc., the first commercial company to use cluster formation flying of small satellites to develop a new class of precision geoanalytic products, is pleased to announce that it selected Norway’s Kongsberg Satellite Service (KSAT) to provide ground station services for its pathfinder mission.
HawkEye 360 plans to use its commercial satellite constellations to identify and geolocate a broad set of radio frequency (RF) signals, and is developing a suite of analytic products to process those signals and help provide unique insights that solve hard challenges for global customers. The agreement with KSAT will allow information about signals detected by HawkEye 360’s Pathfinder satellites to be downlinked directly to KSAT’s ground station in Svalbard, Norway. HawkEye 360 will then process the signals at its Herndon, Virginia headquarters.
“We are pleased to collaborate with KSAT, a company that offers a demonstrable heritage of successful ground operations, a global network of sites, and excellent customer support,” said John Serafini, Chief Executive Officer of HawkEye 360. “This is an exciting step forward for our team as we ready for a Pathfinder launch later this year.”
KSAT is a leading provider of ground station communication services to LEO satellites, with a special focus on polar orbits. From its headquarters in Norway, the company has been pioneering the ground segment business for 50 years. Its Svalbard Ground Station, located on 78 ͦ North, is the world’s largest commercial ground station that, due to the unique location, provides all-orbit support.
Utilization of the Svalbard ground station will enable fresh and timely data reception of HawkEye 360 data. HawkEye 360 will be using the KSAT Lite product platform, an industry-leading new space network developed by KSAT. The standardized KSAT Lite solution will also enable HawkEye 360 to tie in additional stations in KSAT’s global network to further enhance near real-time delivery of their data product.
“KSAT is honored that HawkEye 360 has chosen KSAT and KSAT Lite as their ground station platform and to be able to be part of their success going forward,” said Rolf Skatteboe, KSAT CEO and President. “In addition, we look forward to working with HawkEye 360 on further exploring the use of HawkEye 360’s innovative geoanalytics products in our SAR division, with a focus on maritime surveillance.”
Information about HawkEye 360 can be found at www.he360.com, and on KSAT at www.ksat.no.
About HawkEye 360
HawkEye 360 is an RF data analytics
company. We build, operate and sustain a first-of-its kind commercial
satellite constellation to identify, geolocate, and process a broad set
of RF signals. With this unique data set and our suite of proprietary
processing and machine learning tools, we create powerful data analytic
products that solve hard challenges for our global customers. Our
products include maritime domain awareness and spectrum mapping and
monitoring; our customers include a wide range of commercial, government
and international entities.
About Kongsberg Satellite Service (KSAT)
KSAT is a leading
provider of ground station communication services to LEO satellites with
special focus on polar orbits. Its Svalbard Ground Station located on 78
ͦNorth is the world’s largest commercial ground station that provides
all-orbit support. KSAT operates 20 sites with more than 130 full motion
antennas in a global interconnected network. Presently KSAT supports
more than 1000 satellite contacts per day supporting over 100 satellite
missions. KSAT also provides sophisticated maritime monitoring services
with rapid delivery based on multiple satellite missions to end-users
worldwide. More information about KSAT at www.ksat.no.
