Space & Defense
Grant Watch: Steering a Rocket Plume With an Electric Field
A June 2026 grant claims a method of vectoring thrust electrically rather than by gimballing the engine. If it holds, it points at thrust control with no moving nozzle.
Latest Articles
12 articles indexedSpace & Defense
Claim 1: A Hall-Effect Thruster Patent That Cancels Its Own Torque
A June 2026 University of Michigan grant addresses a quiet problem with electric propulsion — the spin it imparts to a spacecraft — by building the counter-torque into the thruster itself.
Grant Watch
Space & Defense
Grant Watch: Viasat's Patent on Knowing When a Dish Is Aimed Well Enough
A June 2026 Viasat grant sets dynamic signal-quality criteria for satellite terminal installs — the unglamorous claim that decides whether a self-install actually works.
Space & Defense
Crossover: A Patent for Tasking a Satellite Without the Operator Knowing Who You Are
A June 2026 Urugus grant spans space comms and cryptography — an anonymous, authenticated, private system for ordering imagery from a satellite. Privacy meets the payload.
Space & Defense
Claim 1: MDA's Patent on a SAR Constellation for Surveillance and Earth Observation
A June 2026 MDA Systems grant claims satellites built specifically for synthetic-aperture-radar surveillance and earth observation — radar that images through cloud and darkness.
Space & Defense
Whitespace: The Quiet Patent Cluster Around Letting Satellites Kill Themselves
End-of-life disposal is becoming mandatory, and the patent record shows a small, scattered cluster of passive-deorbit ideas — a field still wide open rather than enclosed.
Space & Defense
Claim 1: The Direct-to-Cell Patent That Treats a Satellite as a Cell Tower
Before direct-to-cell was a headline, Lynk Global filed on the core trick: making a satellite speak the language of an ordinary phone's terrestrial base-station protocol.
Space & Defense
Prior Art Check: How a Missile Finds a Moving Target in the Last Seconds
Terminal guidance — the endgame where an interceptor closes on a maneuvering target — is the hard part of missile defense. An MBDA grant lays out one public version of it.
Space & Defense
Portfolio File: Airbus's Patent on the Slow Climb to Mission Orbit
Electric propulsion saves enormous launch mass but trades it for a months-long spiral to operational orbit. An Airbus grant claims a method for managing that transfer.
Space & Defense
Claim 1: Lockheed's Emissive-Composite Patent and the Heat Problem Nobody Sees
Hypersonic flight is, first, a thermal problem. A Lockheed Martin grant on emissive composite materials is a window into how the public record handles a subject that mostly goes dark.
Space & Defense
Claim 1: NASA's Robotic Gripper for Grabbing a Satellite That Was Never Built to Be Grabbed
On-orbit servicing starts with one terrifying step: catching a satellite. A NASA grant on a robotic gripper for autonomous rendezvous and capture decodes how.
Space & Defense
Grant Watch: Boeing's Leading-Edge Patent and Where the Heat Concentrates
On a high-speed vehicle the leading edges take the worst of the heating. A Boeing grant on leading-edge systems is a focused look at that single, decisive structure.