New patent brings TransAstra’s portfolio to 26 issued patents covering every core technology of its business
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESS Newswire / October 30, 2026 / TransAstra (Trans Astronautica Corporation), a space technology company developing space object capture systems, space-based telescope networks, and asteroid resource extraction, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued TransAstra a new patent, “Optics and Structure for Space Applications.” TransAstra founder and CEO Joel Sercel is the named inventor.
The new patent is the latest of four patents granted to TransAstra in the United States and Europe this year.
Protecting the Full In-Space Propellant Supply Chain
The new patent protects the complete architecture behind TransAstra’s vision of an in-space propellant economy, from the asteroid to the customer spacecraft. Its 27 claims cover methods and systems in which:
- An optical mining vehicle encloses an asteroid in a containment device and uses concentrated sunlight to spall its surface, capturing the released water and other volatiles as propellant.
- Solar thermal orbital transfer vehicles, using water as propellant, deliver that material to propellant depots positioned between Earth and a destination.
- Depots mechanically couple with visiting spacecraft to refuel them, with operations spanning low Earth orbit, geostationary orbit, near-Earth asteroids, lunar distant retrograde orbit, and heliocentric orbit.
- Transfer vehicles carry separable aero-maneuvering tanker modules with reusable heat shields, attach to payloads of varying mass, and refuel at depots.
The patent belongs to a family that dates back to TransAstra’s 2015 filings.
A Portfolio Covering Every Core Technology
With 26 issued patents, TransAstra’s portfolio now covers all of the core technologies of its business: Optical Mining of asteroids and other space resources, Omnivore solar thermal propulsion, Mantis capture systems for space objects and debris, and the Sutter space-based telescope network.
“These patents are recognition of just how innovative the TransAstra team is,” said Joel Sercel, founder and CEO of TransAstra. “For more than a decade we have been inventing the technologies needed to find, capture, and use resources in space, and our portfolio now protects every one of them.”
Additional U.S. and European Grants
The new patent follows three other grants to TransAstra over the past year:
- A U.S. patent for deployable lunar landing pads, covering inflatable structures to improve the safety of lunar landings.
- A European patent protecting TransAstra’s Omnivore™ solar thermal thruster technology.
- A U.S. patent for the Omnivore solar thermal thruster covering startup methods for an engine designed to run on water, carbon dioxide, and other propellants harvested in space.
About TransAstra
TransAstra Corporation is a Los Angeles-based space technology company building the infrastructure for an economy in space. Its technologies include Mantis capture systems for space debris remediation and asteroid capture, Sutter technologies for detecting and tracking objects in space, Omnivore solar thermal propulsion, and Optical Mining for extracting resources from asteroids. TransAstra works under contracts with various U.S. Government agencies and is supported by private investor capital. Learn more at transastra.com.
Media contact: Caleb Sacker. caleb@transastra.com
SOURCE: Trans Astronautica Corporation
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