Ships that have sensors can be parked in a starbase for protection, where they will continue to see in their normal radius based on their sensor range. This is working as expected.
However, when you load a game, any ships that are parked in a starbase will not have their sensors active on game load. You have to go the ship, move it out of the starbase which will activate its sensors again, and then you can repark the ship in the starbase where the sensors will remain active. (Until the next game load of course.)
Annoyance when I start playing a game to find all my sensor ships to have to move them out and back into their starbase.