US Patent Issued to Lockheed Martin on April 29 for "Automatic emergency landing gear extension system" (Connecticut, Utah Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,286,217, issued on April 29, was assigned to Lockheed Martin Corp. (Bethesda, Md.).

"Automatic emergency landing gear extension system" was invented by Nicholas D. Lappos (Beryl, Utah) and Christopher A. Thornberg (Newtown, Conn.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Systems and methods for automatically controlling landing gear responsive to detected aerial vehicle conditions. A system can receive, from one or more sensors of the aerial vehicle, altitude information and speed information of the aerial vehicle. The system can determine to lower landing gear of the aerial vehicle based on a change in a state of the aerial vehicle, and identify a ...