ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,479,602, issued on Nov. 25.
"Spacecraft formation control for fixed thrust propulsion" was invented by Tyson Smith (North Logan, Utah) and John Akagi (North Logan, Utah).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "For spacecraft control, a method iteratively measures a drifting spacecraft trajectory of a spacecraft relative to a bounding box, wherein the spacecraft has a fixed maximum thrust, a minimum thrust duration, a thrust duration that is an integer multiple of the minimum thrust duration, and a fixed update period. In response to the determining the spacecraft does not satisfy a trajectory condition, the method iteratively calculates maneuver c...