ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,286,246, issued on April 29.

"Two phase landing system for the moon and its implementation elements" was invented by Charalampos Kosmas (Ilioupolis, Greece).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An innovative landing system for a spacecraft according to the invention includes a foldable tether-based carrier structure that when unfolded assumes wheel-type shape and in its centre supports a carrier platform for the payload of the spacecraft."

The patent was filed on March 25, 2022, under Application No. 18/283,980.

*For further information, including images, charts and tables, please visit: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...