US Patent Issued to Southwest Research Institute on June 17 for "Passively deployable solar panel array with truss backing and synchronizing linkages" (Colorado, Utah Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,334,865, issued on June 17, was assigned to Southwest Research Institute (San Antonio).

"Passively deployable solar panel array with truss backing and synchronizing linkages" was invented by Thomas J. Harvey (Nederland, Colo.), Toby J. Harvey (Enoch, Utah), Randy J. Rose (Broomfield, Colo.) and Thomas J. Rose (Erie, Colo.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A passively deployable solar panel array. A truss backing is attached to the back of the solar panels and has longerons and hinge linkages that form a series of moveable parallelograms operable to fold and unfold. The truss backing further has springs and diagonals, with at least one sprin...