Famous Patents
The ice cream cone was invented at the St. Louis Worlds Fair by Ernest Hamwi in 1904. His waffle booth was next to an ice cream vendor who ran short of dishes. Hamwi rolled a waffle to hold ice cream and the cone was born.
PatentStorm News
Make the Most of Our Site
See this month's Top Inventors and Most Cited Patents.
Stay on top of the latest innovations by subscribing to an RSS feed.
Registered users: Manage your profile.
| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 6173923 | Power wing A spacecraft (10) having a main body portion (12) comprising a payload module (14), a bus module (16) and an antenna potion (17), a first solar wing (24) having a first side (30) and a second side (32), a second solar wing (26) having a first side (36) an... | 01/16/2001 |
| 6152403 | Gyroscopic calibration methods for spacecraft Spacecraft cost, volume and weight are reduced with gyroscope calibration methods that can be effected with structures (e.g., a single-axis Sun sensor and a wheel system) which are typically carried by spacecraft for other purposes. In a method embodiment... | 11/28/2000 |
| 6150907 | Coupling mechanism with moving support member for TE011 and TE01δ resonators The present invention is directed to improved coupling mechanisms for TE011 and TE01δ mode resonators. In one embodiment, the coupling mechanism provides an adjustable connection for transferring electromagnetic energy from a first... | 11/21/2000 |
| 6147640 | Communications satellite interference location system A system and method for determining the location of a source of interference for a communications satellite. The system has an antenna array located on the earth facing panel of the communications satellite. The method and system determine the direction o... | 11/14/2000 |
| 6138450 | Rocket engine with integral combustion chamber step structure and its fabrication A rocket engine is prepared by fabricating a combustion chamber having an annular wall as a single piece of material. The wall has a first axial region with a first inner diameter, a second axial region with a second inner diameter greater than the first ... | 10/31/2000 |
| 6138953 | Slew rate direction determination for acquisition maneuvers using reaction wheels Autonomous slewing of a spacecraft about a desired axis using reaction wheels permits a maximum slew rate without wheel saturation even with one wheel failure. The slew is carried out if the total angular momentum of the spacecraft is less than a momentum... | 10/31/2000 |
| 6128575 | Methods for accurately inserting satellite constellations into common orbit planes Methods are provided for accurate insertion of a constellation of satellites into a common orbit plane with a mean inclination θ. In an embodiment of the invention, an initial satellite is inserted on an initial insertion date and, for each of subsequent... | 10/03/2000 |
| 6118353 | Microwave power divider/combiner having compact structure and flat coupling A power divider/combiner for dividing received powers at 4 input ports, transmitting the divided powers to each of 4 output ports and combining the transmitted powers at each of the output ports. The power divider combiner has through transmission lines f... | 09/12/2000 |
| 6118356 | Microwave cavity having a removable end wall A plurality of end caps engagable with a microwave cavity each have an underside configured differently to cause the microwave cavity to have different electrical responses depending on which end cap engages the microwave cavity. A microwave device includ... | 09/12/2000 |
| 6108593 | Method and apparatus for estimating attitude sensor bias in a satellite A method and apparatus for estimating attitude sensor bias in a satellite system uses attitude sensors and a spacecraft control processor. Attitude sensors provide output signals, which may contain bias. The present invention interprets the signals, deter... | 08/22/2000 |
| 6108594 | Autonomous attitude acquisition for a stellar inertial attitude determination system A method and apparatus for autonomous acquisition of attitude in a stellar inertial spacecraft attitude system is disclosed. The present invention uses star trackers, an on-board star catalog, spacecraft steering and inertial sensors to determine spacecra... | 08/22/2000 |
| 6102337 | Spacecraft attitude control with gimbaled thrusters A spacecraft control system having a spacecraft with a gimbaled thruster attached thereto. An actuator is operationally attached to the gimbaled thruster to control the angled position of the gimbaled thruster in two orthogonal directions. A position cont... | 08/15/2000 |
| 6089508 | Autonomous spacecraft safing with reaction wheels A spacecraft with a reaction wheel system can be autonomously safed by setting the solar wings to continuous tracking, determining a slew rate vector based on the total angular momentum, and slewing the spacecraft using the slew rate vector until commande... | 07/18/2000 |
| 6087646 | Wide field-of-view radiation sensors and methods Methods are provided for sensing radiation direction over a wide field-of-view. In one process step, radiation is received over a first solid angle and, in response, the direction of that radiation is sensed along a first sensor axis. In a similar process... | 07/11/2000 |
| 6083615 | Structure bonded with an electrically conductive adhesive A structure is formed of at least two structural elements that are bonded together with an electrically conductive organic adhesive system. The adhesive system is a mixture of an organic adhesive such as a thermosetting epoxy and a filler of electrically ... | 07/04/2000 |
| 6084869 | Resource reservation for packet-switched multiple-path communication system A method and system for reserving channel resources in a random-access, multiple-path communication system utilizes a transmit group addressing arrangement for a reservation packet. A transceiver terminal wanting to transmit a signal must first send a res... | 07/04/2000 |
| 6077303 | Architectural equation generating algorithm An algorithm (20) or method (20) for verifying that a system hierarchically built from smaller components implements a desired equation that represents the system. Symbolic data is clocked (24) through the system by processing a symbolic test vector using... | 06/20/2000 |
| 6070833 | Methods for reducing solar array power variations while managing the system influences of operating with off-pointed solar wings Solar wing positioning methods are provided which favorably reduce seasonal variation of generated power in a satellite while simultaneously managing the composite system influence that off-pointed solar wing operation imposes on the satellite. The compos... | 06/06/2000 |
| 6068218 | Agile, spinning spacecraft with sun-steerable solar cell array and method An agile, spinning spacecraft has a first body portion and a second body portion which is rotatably coupled about a first rotational axis to the first body portion. A pair of planar solar cell arrays are rotatably coupled to the second body portion along ... | 05/30/2000 |
| 5796319 | Dual mode cavity resonator with coupling grooves An electromagnetic resonator comprises an interior wall defining a substantially cylindrical cavity having a major axis. The interior wall includes first and second coupling grooves substantially parallel to the major axis. For a lesser level of coupling,... | 08/18/1998 |
