Defence has awarded space engineering company Saber Astronautics an innovation contract for the development of technology that can autonomously identify electronic threats to support the Royal Australian Air Force.

The contract, which is valued at $275,000, involves the use of Saber’s advanced machine learning capability.

“Commercial small satellites are more susceptible to solar storms but still need to produce clean data for customers on Earth,” said Dr Jason Held, Saber Astronautics director and CEO. “We are particularly excited to explore this potential more broadly with the Australian Air Force.”

This contract is part of the second tranche of Defence Innovation Hub investments.