US Patent Issued to Maxar Space on Aug. 5 for "Solar array spring elements for stacking spacecraft" (California, Nevada, Arizona Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,378,008, issued on Aug. 5, was assigned to Maxar Space LLC (Palo Alto, Calif.).

"Solar array spring elements for stacking spacecraft" was invented by Harry A. Yates (Mountain View, Calif.), Ryan Bieniek (Reno, Nev.), Alan J. Szeto (San Jose, Calif.), Kate Psyk (Tucson, Ariz.) and Jonathan Briend (San Francisco).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An example of an apparatus includes a spacecraft body and a solar array that is attached to the spacecraft body. In addition, a solar array spring element is configured to provide a force between the solar array and one or more components of a neighboring spacecraft in a stack of spacecraft."

The pate...