The idea was to make space not only a democratised playing field, but to reduce the barriers to entry, not dissimilar to driving a car, or playing a video game.
Founded in 2008, Saber Astronautics is a leading space asset management company focused on mission operations, space traffic management, and mission design. Saber brings together the latest in human factors, artificial intelligence, and dynamic 3D data visualization making the monitoring, flying, and rapid diagnosis of spacecraft systems trivial. The passionately skilled people at Saber alongside next generation tools have built a quick, responsive and complete operational system for all stages of flight.
Today, Saber Astronautics finds a home in Adelaide for the Responsive Space Operations Centre (RSOC™), the nation’s first dedicated space mission control*, housed inside the Australian Space Discovery Centre. From the RSOC, Saber operators are responsible for spacecraft starting as small as a loaf of bread, to the largest commercial communications payload ever deployed to Low-Earth Orbit. Every mission from inception to flight has its own unique set of problems, which are solved by expert teams at Saber to allow for quality, safety, and most importantly, sustainability in the increasingly crowded orbits above Earth.
Saber’s work has been tightly coupled with the Australian space industry with interests in both government and commercial sector; Ranging from ingesting space weather data from the Bureau of Meteorology, providing critical space situational reporting to the Australian Space Agency, through to coordinating space traffic management activities on behalf of the Asia-Pacific region. Saber’s work is enabled by many Aussie space companies providing critical, enabling datasets to achieve current capabilities. With a connected network of sensors and dishes growing by the month, Saber is looking forward to expanding these collaborations.
To further support Saber’s efforts to service the industry, a brand new office and mission design centre is scheduled to open soon. Within the Bice Building at the Lot Fourteen innovation precinct on Adelaide North Terrace, the new facilities will provide room for Saber’s growing team of space engineers, operators and scientists.
The future is incredibly bright for the Australian space sector, and Saber Astronautics, as the industry collectively pushes forward to create a sustainable and industry-driven presence globally.
To find out more, please visit: https://saberastro.com, or follow us on social media.
*In 2020, the Department of Industry, Science, Innovation, and Resources in conjunction with the Australian Space Agency awarded Saber Astronautics a $6 Million grant for the Mission Control Centre from the Australian Government’s Space Infrastructure Fund.
