Rocket Lab Launches 98th Mission, Delivering Three Hawk Satellites to Orbit

Rocket Lab launched three commercial signals-intelligence satellites into space on Oct. 23.

An Electron rocket lifted off from the company's New Zealand launch site at 3:11 a.m. EDT (0711 GMT), which was 8:11 p.m. local time. The payload was three Hawk satellites built for HawkEye 360, a Virginia-based company. Rocket Lab named the mission 'We're Not Hawking Around.' If the flight proceeds as planned, the three spacecraft will be deployed into low Earth orbit at an altitude of 323 miles (520 kilometers) to begin scanning the planet for radio frequency emissions.

Rocket Lab said the satellites 'operate in clusters of three' to collect signal data across the RF spectrum for maritime tracking, GNSS jamming detection, radar monitoring, communications mapping and space defense. HawkEye 360 supplies this information to the U.S. government and its allies. The company says the aim is 'to enable faster, better decision-making.' It also states: 'Our space-based collection, proprietary signal processing and AI-powered analytics transform knowledge of the RF spectrum into a strategic advantage.' The company put its first satellites into orbit in 2018 and has now launched nearly 50 into low Earth orbit.

The Oct. 23 flight followed another HawkEye 360 deployment by two days. Three of the company's satellites launched on SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission. Rocket Lab's launch was its 98th overall and its 19th of 2026. Sixteen of this year's flights have used the two-stage, 59-foot-tall (18-meter) Electron, while three others were flown by HASTE, a suborbital variant of Electron that allows customers to test technologies in a hypersonic flight environment.

No further launches were scheduled in the source material.