US Patent Issued to Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory on April 8 for "Model predictive control for spacecraft formation" (Utah Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,269,618, issued on April 8, was assigned to Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory (North Logan, Utah).

"Model predictive control for spacecraft formation" was invented by Tyson Smith (Logan, Utah), John Akagi (Logan, Utah) and Greg Droge (Nibley, Utah).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "For model predictive control for a spacecraft formation, a method calculates a virtual point that represents a plurality of spacecraft orbiting in a spacecraft formation. The method calculates an outer polytope boundary and an inner polytope boundary relative to the virtual point for a given spacecraft of the plurality of spacecraft. The method maneu...