Saber Commander Launches | Managing the Future of Satellite Fleets

[00:00:00]Dr. Jason Held, CEO with Saber Astronautics. Thanks for joining us on Australia in Space TV once again and here at the 19th Australia Space Forum in Adelaide. Thanks for joining us.

[00:00:08]>> Loving it. It's my pleasure to be at this great conference.

[00:00:10]>> Wonderful. Yeah, you've got a booth here as well, but this is on the back of some news that just came out just yesterday.

[00:00:16]In fact, over the weekend, you've just released a new version of Saber Commander which takes over from your existing PIGGY system. Introduce us to Saber Commander and you're now managing fleets in space or have that capability.

[00:00:29]>> Yeah, yeah. So, so Saber Astronautics, we've been in business about 18 years.

[00:00:32]You know, when year after this thing you know started I actually 19 years. But, yeah, interesting. Saber, we fly satellites for a living. So, we've got the mission control center out at Lot 14 called the Responsive Space Operations Center or RSOC for short. And in the US out of Colorado, we have another one so we have follow the sun operations service. And we're flying 36 tons on orbit right now. And the software that we're talking about, the predictive ground station interface, was a workhorse for many years at at Saber.

[00:01:02]It started since 2010 is when we started working on the on this on this software and building it up over time. And it was really good at managing individual satellites and doing mission design and things like this.

[00:01:14]Saber Commander is the upgrade to PIGGY.

[00:01:16]So, so PIGGY is is done. Saber Commander is the new version of Saber's workhorse command and control software.

[00:01:23]And it is designed around fleet management. It's designed so you can drill down from the constellation all the way down to the individual satellite, down to the individual part and back out again. You get full control over everything.

[00:01:34]>> And you mentioned things like off camera space weather. So, it's monitoring the environment around that fleet.

[00:01:40]>> Yeah.

[00:01:40]>> And I most space companies are now looking to manage constellations. So, is there any limit on what you're doing or is there a way to grow with the client?

[00:01:48]>> No, no limits no limits whatsoever. We have monitored like like on the cuz we're operators as well as developers of our own software and that gives us certain advantages. We get to see immediately what happens on the ops floor, and so we we build around that.

[00:02:00]So, yes, we have space weather embedded already in PIGGY. SAFER has a lot of space expertise over the years, and and for our machine learning, we've we've added that that, you know, space weather and our machine learning has given us certain capabilities in satellite diagnostics. You know, SAFER is actually listed as a NASA spinout for the work first company in the world actually proved that machine learning could work with with satellite diagnostics back with the NASA Goddard back in in 2012.

[00:02:27]>> Right. Back in the day.

[00:02:29]>> Well, is there is there broader space situational awareness with other constellations on the platform, or is it just focused on fleet management? Uh yeah, or can you extrapolate that data to a larger footprint?

[00:02:41]>> Yeah, absolutely. You could pull in anything from the satellite catalog.

[00:02:45]SAFER Commander's got a sister product that's run out of SAFER's USA offices called Space Battle Management System, and that is the protect and defend for all of the Space Force Combat Command Deltas. That's uh something that happened last November.

[00:03:01]So, that's that's monitoring space domain awareness for GPS, Milstar, missile warning, major programs, launch sites, and things like that. So, a lot of the the techniques we're able to kind of carry through within, you know, the natural limitations of export controls. So, we have full catalog maintenance capability in Commander, and on our ops floors, we have both tools so the operators can see what's going on and and handle safety of flight and space traffic and space awareness at the same time that they could command individual satellites or fleets or automated so they could step back and get a cup of coffee like a normal human something.

[00:03:37]>> Yeah, as long as they can task missions as well. Most constellations are moving around as well. What's a good call to action? What are you after from clients, or how can they get in touch?

[00:03:46]>> Uh well, they could contact us at [email protected] if they got missions coming up. We're always looking for new missions.

[00:03:53]Naturally, we've got a lot of heritage at the moment, which is great.

[00:03:57]But, we still want to help out the Australian small business community. We know there's a lot of effort and investments that go in. And we really are in a position to de-risk them as well as help them introduce their brand being that we're running a national center right now as >> Okay, well, good timing. Back into the sessions. Jason Hill, thanks once once again for joining us on Australian Space TV. And enjoy the rest of the Australian Space Forum.

[00:04:22]>> [music]