Deorbit Device Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- One assignee dominates a thin field. the leader holds 12 filings against a fifth-place entrant at just 2, out of only 9 ranked assignees across the whole dataset.
- Filing momentum has cooled from its 2022 peak. activity ran as high as 10 filings in 2022, then fell from 3 filings in 2021 to 1 in 2024 — a 67% drop over that span, the most recent period the data supports.
- Claims cluster almost entirely in spacecraft classes. 76.5% of the 17 records in scope sit in B64G (cosmonautics & spacecraft), leaving communications, marine and imaging-adjacent classes as thin, largely unclaimed edges.
Filing growth compares 2021 (3 records) with 2024 (1) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field.
What this landscape covers
Deorbit devices and passive disposal technologies cover the mechanisms that pull a spacecraft out of orbit at end of life without active propulsion: drag sails, electrodynamic tethers, inflatable booms and deployable heat shields that raise a spacecraft’s effective cross-section to accelerate atmospheric decay. The search underlying this page combines device-level terms with the mechanical and orbital-mechanics language that distinguishes a real deployment claim — sail deployment mechanism, ballistic coefficient, shape memory hinge — from a passing mention of orbital debris.
The scope returns 17 published records spanning 2015 through the 2026 cut-off, filed out of receiving offices including the United States, the EPO, the United Kingdom and India. It is a small, young field: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so any activity from late 2024 onward is still arriving in the record.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 17-record dataset: filings by year, and the IPC subclasses those filings claim into. Because a single record can carry more than one IPC class, the composition shares below add to more than 100% of the record total.
A short, front-loaded filing history
Filings sat at zero in 2017, built toward a peak of 10 in 2022, then declined — 3 filings in 2021 down to 1 in 2024, a 67% drop across that window. Treat 2025 and 2026 as undercounted rather than as evidence the field has stopped.
Concentration in B64G
B64G (cosmonautics & spacecraft) covers 76.5% of the 17 records in scope, the expected core for deorbit hardware. H04B (transmission, 17.6%), B63H (marine propulsion & steering, 5.9%) and H04N (pictorial communication, 5.9%) appear only as secondary classes on a handful of records, marking them as thin rather than developed branches.
Shares are the percentage of the 17 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Deorbit Devices and Passive Disposal with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about deorbit devices and passive disposal and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited filings in this set
Spacecraft Heat Shield — Space Forge Limited (2024-08-15)
The filing describes a deployable atmospheric-entry heat shield built as a transformable polyhedral surface in a flasher-fold pattern: sectors joined by mountain and valley fold lines unfold from a compact stowed configuration into a deployed shield. It is the most recent design in this set to combine deployable-structure mechanics with atmospheric-entry survivability rather than drag augmentation alone.Abstract text drawn directly from the published filing.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20240204864A1 | ThinSat Constellations that are a group of satellites for carrying payloads for experimentation and data coll… | 7 |
| 2 | WO2023026063A1 | Spacecraft heat shield | 2 |
| 3 | US20240270412A1 | Spacecraft Heat Shield | 2 |
| 4 | GB202112331D0 | Spacecraft heat shield | 1 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate them — read this as a signal of influence within the corpus, not of current commercial weight.
Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (4 of 4 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three findings that shape where a new filing would land in this field.
One assignee, a thin bench behind it
The ranked leader holds 12 of the tracked filings; by fifth place the count is down to 2, and only 9 assignees appear in the ranking at all. That is a field with one heavily invested filer and a scatter of individual inventors and small entities behind it, not a competitive multi-player race.
Post-peak, not pre-peak
Filings peaked at 10 in 2022 and by 2024 — the most recent complete year — had fallen back to levels last seen well before the peak, down 67% from the 2021 count of 3. A new entrant is filing into a field past its first filing wave, where prior art is set but activity has room to pick back up.
Deployment mechanics are the crowded core
Three in four records in scope claim into B64G, the spacecraft and cosmonautics class that covers deployment structures and boom mechanisms directly. Communications (H04B), marine steering (B63H) and imaging (H04N) appear only as secondary classes on isolated records — evidence of edges that have barely been claimed rather than evidence they are unimportant.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to deorbit devices and passive disposal, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranking below is the complete set the data endpoint returns for this topic — 9 assignees, not a top-50 or top-100 cut. Two co-assignee clusters recur across the strongest filer's records, suggesting a small internal team rather than a formal joint venture.
A single dominant filer
The top-ranked assignee accounts for 12 filings, far ahead of the field. Its recurring co-assignee pairings point to a consistent small inventing team working across multiple filings rather than a single one-off application.
Individual inventors and small entities
Below the leader, filing counts drop quickly — fifth place sits at just 2. Several names in the ranking are individual inventors rather than corporations, and a UK entity and an Indian academic institution each appear with a small number of filings, pointing to geographically scattered, low-volume activity rather than concentrated corporate R&D.
Filing spread across four regions
Receiving offices split fairly evenly between the United States, the EPO, the United Kingdom and India, with single filings in Austria and Germany. No single office dominates the way a single assignee dominates the ranking — this looks like a technology being protected regionally around specific launches or programmes rather than through a global filing strategy.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Space Forge Limited | 0 | — |
| VOSS MATTHEW C | 0 | — |
| VOSS HANK D | 0 | — |
| ORVIS MATTHEW B | 0 | — |
| DAILEY JEFF F | 0 | — |
| SPACE FORGE LTD CARDIFF SOUTH | 0 | — |
| SIDDAGANGA INST OF TECH AN INSTION OF SREE SIDDAGANGA EDUCATION SOC | 0 | — |
| PRANAV MILIND SAWANT | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
This landscape is a starting point for a filing or freedom-to-operate decision, not the finished analysis.
Check the claims, not just the abstracts
The most-cited records here are heat-shield and constellation filings whose claims define specific fold patterns, deployment sequences and structural elements — the abstracts above only summarise them. A design that avoids the specific mechanism claimed can still sit outside the blocking scope.
Explore claim scope in EurekaTrack the post-2024 filings as they publish
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 activity is still incomplete in this dataset. Re-running this search periodically will surface filings that are not yet visible.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions on deorbit device patents
In this landscape, a deorbit device is a mechanism that removes a spacecraft from orbit passively or semi-passively at end of life, without relying on a full propulsion burn. That covers drag sails and inflatable booms that increase atmospheric drag, electrodynamic tethers that use the geomagnetic field to generate a deorbiting force, and deployable structures such as heat shields that manage the resulting atmospheric entry. The search behind this page pairs those device terms with mechanical and orbital-mechanics language — deployment mechanisms, ballistic coefficient, shape memory hinges — to filter out passing mentions of debris mitigation that do not claim a specific mechanism.
The ranking behind this page covers 9 assignees, and the leader holds 12 of the tracked filings, well ahead of a fifth-place assignee at 2. That gap means one filer has built a real position while the rest of the field consists mostly of individual inventors and small entities with one or two filings each. It is a concentrated field at the top with a long, thin tail beneath it, rather than several comparably sized competitors.
Filings peaked at 10 in 2022 and had fallen to 1 by 2024, a 67% drop from the 3 filings recorded in 2021 — 2024 is the most recent year in this dataset that can be treated as complete. That does not necessarily mean underlying R&D has stopped: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 counts are still filling in and should not be read as a continued decline. The honest read is that the field passed a first filing wave in 2022 and its current trajectory is not yet visible in published data.
Almost all activity in this dataset — 76.5% of the 17 records — sits in B64G, the core spacecraft and deployment-structure class. Secondary classes like transmission (H04B), marine propulsion (B63H) and pictorial communication (H04N) appear on only one or a few records each, which suggests areas such as tether-based deorbit control, drag-sail deployment latching mechanisms and reentry survivability coatings are thin rather than fully claimed. A new filing that targets one of those specific mechanisms is less likely to run into dense prior art than one aimed at general drag-sail deployment.
US20240270412A1, filed by Space Forge Limited and published in 2024, claims a deployable atmospheric-entry heat shield built from a transformable polyhedral surface folded in a flasher pattern, using defined mountain and valley fold lines to unfold from a stowed to a deployed configuration. It sits among the most-cited records in this dataset alongside closely related filings covering the same 'spacecraft heat shield' concept in other jurisdictions. Anyone designing a deployable heat shield should review its specific fold geometry and deployment-sequence claims rather than assume the general concept of a foldable heat shield is blocked outright.
Research Deorbit Devices and Passive Disposal in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole deorbit devices and passive disposal corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.