The SABER instrument is a 10-channel infrared (1.27 to 16.9 µm) radiometer that will measure Earth limb emissions from the TIMED (Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics) satellite.

The instrument telescope is a Cassegrain design with a picket-fence tuning fork chopper at the first focus, and a clam shell reimager to focus the image on the focal plane. The telescope has been designed to reject stray light from the Earth and atmosphere outside the instrument instantaneous field-of-view (IFOV). The baffle assembly contains a single axis scan mirror which permits the 2 km vertical IFOV of each detector to be scanned from the Earth to a 400 km tangent height. Accurate vertical registration of the tangent height of the data in the atmosphere is achieved by analysis of the 14.9 µm CO2 channels. The telescope and baffle assembly are cooled to 240 K by a dedicated radiator. The focal plane assembly, consisting of a filter array, a detector array, and a Lyot stop is cooled to 75 K by a miniature cryogenic refrigerator. The detector array contains discrete HgCdTe, InSb, and InGaAs detectors.