A device used to track starships through space, the
homing beacon was a useful tool for spies, bounty
hunters and pirates.
Homing beacons came in a variety of shapes and
sizes, depending on the manufacturer, though many
of the more common devices were flat, circular objects.
A homing beacon worked by sending a tracking
signal to the owner after being attatched to a ship.
These signals could travel immense distances, and
ensured the ship would not be lost...unless the pilot
located the beacon. If a homing beacon was attatched to a ship, a cloaking shadow of the ship would show up on the pilot's cockpit display screens. This was how Boba and Jango Fett located the tracking device planted on the Slave 1 by Obi-Wan Kenobi. They destroyed the beacon with an electric charge, but the Jedi had already found them. Decades later, a homing beacon was used by the Empire to track the Millennium Falcon to the hidden Rebel base on Yavin IV. However, Princess Leia didn't need a cloaking shadow to realize they were being tracked, even though Han Solo wouldn't admit his ship was being followed.
The Empire used homing beacons to exploit the HoloNet communication network. As ships flying through hyperspace travelled through 'simu-tunnels' - limited dimensional domains that appeared as a whirling tunnel of Doppler-distorted light - the Imperials used the HoloNet non-mass transcievers deposited at these 'S-threads'. The transcievers logged such activity, and thus the Imperial trackers were able to calculate where the vessel was heading as it travelled through hyperspace. |
