US Patent Issued to AIRBUS DEFENCE AND SPACE on April 22 for "Method for optimising the orbital transfer of an electrically propelled spacecraft, and satellite using said method" (French Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,280,896, issued on April 22, was assigned to AIRBUS DEFENCE AND SPACE SAS (Toulouse, France).

"Method for optimising the orbital transfer of an electrically propelled spacecraft, and satellite using said method" was invented by Ivan Laine (Toulouse, France), Eric Martin (Toulouse, France), Marie Catherine Maag (Toulouse, France) and Jean Francois Diraison (Toulouse, France).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method for transferring a spacecraft (10), such as an artificial satellite, from an initial elliptical orbit (30) to a final geostationary orbit (50), the spacecraft taking at least one intermediate elliptical orbit (40) propelled by ele...