US Patent Issued to The Regents of the University of Michigan on April 14 for "Targeted-current-density hall thruster" (Michigan Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,601,330, issued on April 14, was assigned to The Regents of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Mich.).

"Targeted-current-density hall thruster" was invented by Benjamin Jorns (Ann Arbor, Mich.), Eric Viges (Ann Arbor, Mich.), Madison Allen (Ann Arbor, Mich.), Thomas Marks (Ann Arbor, Mich.), Christopher Sercel (Ann Arbor, Mich.), William Hurley (Ann Arbor, Mich.), Parker Roberts (Ann Arbor, Mich.), Leanne Su (Ann Arbor, Mich.) and Tate Gill (Ann Arbor, Mich.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A thruster includes a current loop, a magnetic circuit within the current loop, a channel, a propellant reservoir and an ejection outlet. The chan...