ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,600,497, issued on April 14, was assigned to Maxar Space LLC (Palo Alto, Calif.).
"Linked spacecraft dispensing" was invented by Varouj Baghdasarian (Cupertino, Calif.) and Patrick Lewis (Santa Cruz, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Technology is disclosed herein for dispensing stacked spacecraft. A stack of spacecraft may be joined together in an accordion configuration by dis-engageable links. A dis-engageable link may join two adjacent spacecraft at one edge of the spacecraft. Some of the links are on one side of the stack with other links on an opposite side of the stack to provide the accordion configuration. After the tie-dow...