Lessons Learned from the HawkEye-SeaHawk Mission

The SeaHawk-HawkEye mission was conceived to launch an ocean color radiometer (HawkEye) on a CubeSat nanosatellite (SeaHawk). The launch in December 2018 followed by operationalization (i.e., demonstration of its ability for fine-pointing, collection of high-quality imagery, transmission to ground stations, and processing to retrieve remote sensing reflectances) in June 2021 proved the concept. HawkEye collected 120 m resolution images at wavelengths and spectral characteristics nearly matching those of the best-in-class SeaWiFS mission.

The original project, named Sustained Ocean Color Observations from Nanosatellites (SOCON) proposed to demonstrate the capabilities of a single or small number of SeaHawk-HawkEye-like instruments while also highlighting the potential scientific gains from a constellation of such satellite-sensor combinations. As such, the HawkEye design information was intended from the start to be readily available, and the team wishes to share lessons learned to save others from our discovered and hypothesized pitfalls.

This paper summarizes issues with HawkEye and SeaHawk where shortcomings were discovered, or where the team did not have the proper experience to evaluate the expected performance on-orbit properly. This is a hodgepodge of issues and does not serve as a comprehensive design document.

Please contact project PI Phil Bresnahan at bresnahanp@uncw.edu with questions.