Homing beacon/Legends



"You're sure the homing beacon is secure aboard their ship? I'm taking an awful risk, Vader. This had better work."

- Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin

A homing beacon, homing device, or tracking device, was used to track starships or any other entity being transported. Capable of transmitting data enormous distances, homing beacons could relay the position of a ship even after several hyperspace jumps.

Imperial beacons (and, presumably, ones used by the Galactic Republic) used non-mass HoloNet transceivers located in hyperspatial "simu-tunnels" to track ships through hyperspace. When a homing beacon passed a transceiver, the incident was logged; allowing trackers to determine the heading of a vessel from a collection of these reports.



Many homing beacons were miniaturized, so as to prevent detection by the crew of the ship being tracked. As such, they could be hidden either inside of the ship or tucked in some crevice on the ship's exterior; in fact, some beacon models were small enough to be thrown towards a departing ship's hull.

Obi-Wan Kenobi used such a device on Slave I in order to track Jango Fett to Geonosis just prior to the start of the Clone Wars.

The Empire also used a similar device to track the Millennium Falcon in order to discover the location of the hidden Rebel base on Yavin IV. The beacon was planted aboard the Falcon by a HMOR homing droid.

Appearances

 * Tales of the Jedi: The Golden Age of the Sith
 * Tales of the Jedi: The Fall of the Sith Empire
 * Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
 * Star Wars Empire: Darklighter
 * Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope