Satellite Startup Hires Space Law Expert as Next General Counsel

At a time when many people are thinking about leaving earth, Hawkeye 360 Inc. is looking to pinpoint things on this planet.

The privately held, Herndon, Va.-based company, founded in 2015, announced Wednesday its addition of executive vice president and general counsel Dennis Burnett. Unlike other satellite operators that use pictures to geolocate, Hawkeye monitors commercial signals and radio frequencies to triangulate and track things for its clients.

“If there’s a distress signal coming from a ship, we can locate that on the surface of the earth from space,” said Burnett, crediting Hawkeye’s three “sophisticated, desk-sized” satellites. “They’re one-tenth the ...