SaxaVord Space Traffic Management Consortium
The SaxaVord UK Spaceport (Unst, Shetland) is taking advantage of its exceptional geographic position as a small satellite launch site with access to near polar, Sun-synchronous orbits, to become a comprehensive Northern Space Launch and Observation Centre.
SaxaVord Spaceport, ThinkTank Maths Limited (TTM) and Dr. Moriba Jah have committed to collaborate as the SaxaVord Space Domain Awareness (SDA) Consortium to create commercially viable SDA/STM services based on scientifically robust capabilities (abductive inference and analysis), which ensure the safe and sustainable use of Space. Moriba Jah is a world expert and thought leader in dealing with collision risks to satellite constellations due to ever-increasing space traffic and debris orbiting in Lower Earth Orbit (LEO). The SaxaVord SDA Consortium will deliver assured SDA services to commercial and Government clients – giving them insight and confidence from their data to make complex manoeuvre decisions and protect their assets – this is known as decision-quality insight at the speed of relevance. ThinkTank Maths is reducing the current level of uncertainty in the assumed position of a space object and its predicted orbit. The ARGUSGraph, our SDA platform, also uses TTM’s Trusted Reasoning Architecture (TRA™) to fuse vast heterogenous data sets from our powerful digital library of space domain data. The SaxaVord SDA Consortium is also exploring innovative sensing partnerships to help to more accurately detect, track, and characterise space objects. Together we aim to create an end-to-end space domain decision intelligence capability – a leading provider of assured Space Traffic Management services to satellite constellation operators – and a determining element of the UK and its allies’ sovereign SDA capability.
The Consortium will also offer a range of launch support services to the New Space industry.
ThinkTank Maths has supported the SaxaVord Spaceport since our first meeting in May 2018, bringing our commercial contacts at ArianeGroup (France) to Shetland in the summer of 2018 to help the Shetland Space Centre define an operations concept and assess the range of missions possible for its Spaceport project in the frame of a three-month study.
In my exploration of wicked problems requiring the creation of solutions that are allergic to viral prejudice used by most as a flawed way to remove the inherent uncertainties, the universe led me to the intellectual tavern called Think Tank Maths for a much needed drink.
Moriba Kemessia Jah
Moriba Kemessia Jah
Moriba Jah is an associate professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin where he is the holder of the Mrs. Pearlie Dashiell Henderson Centennial Fellowship in Engineering.
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