US Patent Issued to INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES on Aug. 4 for "Harnessing waste heat of spacecraft to transmit data" (Texas, North Carolina, Illinois Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,698,103, issued on Aug. 4, was assigned to INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).

"Harnessing waste heat of spacecraft to transmit data" was invented by Steven Lee Fisher-Stawinski (Buffalo Grove, Ill.), Naeem Altaf (Round Rock, Texas), John Stern Alexander (Hampstead, N.C.) and Scott E. Schneider (Rolesville, N.C.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Described are techniques for harnessing the waste heat of a spacecraft to transmit data. A heat sink is thermally connected to the spacecraft. A heat sink refers to a component used to dissipate heat generated by components, such as electronics of a spacecraft, allowing the heat sin...