ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,352,686, issued on July 8, was assigned to THE AEROSPACE Corp. (El Segundo, Calif.).
"In-situ contamination monitoring" was invented by Rocky G. Morales (Long Beach, Calif.), Aileen O. Hui (Los Angeles) and De-Ling Liu (Manhattan Beach, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A multi-purpose in-situ contamination sampler includes an inner frame surrounded by a plurality of removable or attachable pieces, each of which include of a single witness surface configured to collect both particulate and molecular contamination within an environment on a payload or a spacecraft."
The patent was filed on Jan. 6, 2022, under Application No. 17/570,30...