Space Telescope Optical Design Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Concentrated at the top. the leading assignee holds 24 of 104 records in scope, and the top 5 combined account for 64.4% of all 104 records.
- Optical elements dominate the classification mix. G02B covers 82.7% of records, dwarfing every adjacent IPC subclass including radiation measurement and spacecraft structures.
- Filing has pulled back from its 2022 peak. filings ran from 4 in 2021 down to 1 in 2024, a -75% swing over that span, before the most recent, still-incomplete years.
Filing growth compares 2021 (4 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. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 104 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent activity at the intersection of space telescope optics and the engineering problems that make large-aperture imaging work on orbit: wavefront error correction, stray light baffling, athermal optical mounts, mirror lightweighting, on-orbit alignment and diffraction-limited imaging. The search combines telescope-architecture terms — space telescope, three-mirror anastigmat, off-axis telescope — with these enabling techniques, so the corpus is narrower than general optics patenting but broad enough to catch adjacent instrumentation that reuses the same claim language.
104 published records fall inside the window, spanning receiving offices led by the United States, with meaningful volume also filed through Israel, the European Patent Office and the PCT route. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent years in any trend read low and should not be read as a slowdown on their own.
Trend and technology composition
The filing curve and the IPC mix tell two different stories: one about pacing, the other about where claim density actually sits inside the optical stack.
Filings rose to a 2022 peak, then eased
Annual filings climbed from 13 in 2017 to a peak of 17 in 2022, then declined toward a complete-year low of 1 in 2024 (down from 4 in 2021, a -75% move over that three-year span). Treat 2025 and beyond as undercounted rather than as evidence of a cooling field.
G02B carries the field; everything else is secondary
G02B (optical elements and systems) appears in 82.7% of the 104 records in scope, far ahead of G01J radiation measurement at 18.3% and G03B photographic apparatus at 6.7%. Spacecraft-specific classification, B64G, appears in only 3.8% of records, suggesting most claims are written as general optical instrumentation rather than spacecraft-specific hardware.
Shares are the percentage of the 104 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Space Telescope Optical Design with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about space telescope optical design and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative record and the most-cited prior art
Device and method for detecting wavefront error by modal-based optimization phase retrieval using extended Nijboer-Zernike theory
The disclosure provides a device for detecting a wavefront error by modal-based optimization phase retrieval using an extended Nijboer-Zernike (ENZ) theory. The detection device includes a point light source, a half mirror, a lens to be tested, a plane mirror and an image sensor. The wavefront error of the component under test is characterized using a Zernike polynomial, whose coefficients are solved via ENZ diffraction theory, enabling one-time full-aperture measurement on a large-aperture optical component using a partially overexposed image.Filed by Zhejiang University; published 2022-01-06.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6439720B1 | Method and apparatus for measuring optical aberrations of the human eye | 122 |
| 2 | US20020047992A1 | Method and apparatus for measuring optical aberrations of the human eye | 90 |
| 3 | US20040051878A1 | Ring optical interferometer | 25 |
| 4 | US7203552B2 | Method and apparatus for controlling a deformable mirror | 23 |
| 5 | US20110157600A1 | Optical wave-front recovery for active and adaptive imaging control | 22 |
| 6 | US20090051772A1 | Establishing and maintaining focus in segmented-optic telescopes | 22 |
| 7 | US7013183B1 | Multiplexer hardware and software for control of a deformable mirror | 22 |
| 8 | US20150316763A1 | Optimized actuators for ultra-thin mirrors | 16 |
| 9 | US7380950B1 | Hybrid high-bandwidth deformable fast steering mirror | 15 |
| 10 | US9396294B1 | Method of modeling and simulation of shaped external occulters | 14 |
Citation counts favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate references; read them as a signal of influence within this corpus, not as a ranking of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns matter most for anyone deciding where to file next in space telescope optics: how tight ownership is at the top, how narrow the classification footprint is, and how the citation record skews toward earlier wavefront-sensing work.
A small group holds most of the claim space
The leading assignee alone accounts for 24 of the 104 records in scope, and the top 5 combined reach 64.4% of all records. The ranking runs to 32 companies total, so beyond the leaders there is a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants rather than a second tier of comparable scale.
Claims cluster in general optics, not spacecraft hardware
G02B optical elements and systems covers the large majority of records, while B64G cosmonautics and spacecraft appears in only 3.8%. That gap suggests many filers are protecting optical mechanisms and measurement methods that could apply beyond a spacecraft context, which widens the prior art a new filer must clear.
The most-cited prior art predates current filings
The two most-cited records in this corpus both concern measuring optical aberrations of the human eye rather than telescope optics directly, a reminder that wavefront-sensing and adaptive-optics methods migrated into this field from ophthalmic instrumentation. Older, highly cited records shape the baseline vocabulary examiners will search against.
Momentum has cooled from the 2022 peak
Filings rose to a peak of 17 in 2022 before easing to a complete-year low of 1 in 2024, down from 4 in 2021. Because publication lags filing by about 18 months, the 2025-2026 figures are not yet reliable evidence of direction.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to space telescope optical design, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space, and where the door is still open
Ownership is concentrated among a handful of filers, but the classification data points to sub-areas where filing density is still thin.
One assignee sets the baseline
The top-ranked assignee holds 24 of the 104 records in this landscape, well ahead of the field. Any new filing in adjacent claim language should expect to be examined against this assignee's portfolio first.
A modest second tier, then a long tail
Fifth place holds 6 records and tenth place holds 3, showing a gradual taper rather than a sharp cliff. Below the top 10, which together hold 83.7% of all 104 records, ownership fragments across many single- or few-filing entities.
Collaboration is limited and individual-led
Only 7 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, the strongest recurring one linking individual inventors rather than corporate partners. Cross-company collaboration on filings is not a visible feature of this landscape.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Raytheon | 0 | — |
| CSO Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| CHOI YOUNGWAN | 0 | — |
| RHOADS GEOFFREY B | 0 | — |
| Thales SA | 0 | — |
| DEAN BRUCE H | 0 | — |
| SolVisions Tech Intl | 0 | — |
| United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Health and Human Services | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a concentrated core and a thin periphery. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means working the specific claims, not just the aggregate counts.
Map the leader's claim boundaries
Before drafting near G02B-heavy claim language, pull the leading assignee's full family and check independent claim scope against any planned athermal mount or baffle geometry.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaStress-test the white space chips
The under-claimed sub-areas listed here are starting points, not guarantees; run a fuller search on each before committing drafting resources.
Run a deeper search in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
Ownership in this landscape is concentrated: the leading assignee holds 24 of the 104 records in scope, and the top 5 assignees together account for 64.4% of all records. Beyond the top 10, which hold 83.7% combined, the ranking of 32 companies tapers into a long tail of single- or few-filing entities. This means a small number of organisations set the baseline prior art that any new filer must clear, while the rest of the field is fragmented rather than consolidated in a second tier.
Filings peaked at 17 in 2022 and had fallen to 1 by 2024, a -75% move from the 4 filed in 2021. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset will always look artificially low and should not be read as proof the field is cooling. The safest complete-year comparison available right now is 2021 to 2024, and that comparison does show a real pullback from the 2022 peak.
G02B, optical elements and systems, dominates with 82.7% of the 104 records in scope. Radiation and light measurement (G01J) follows at 18.3%, and photographic apparatus (G03B) at 6.7%. Spacecraft-specific classification (B64G) appears in only 3.8% of records, which indicates most claims are drafted as general optical instrumentation or measurement methods rather than as spacecraft-specific structural hardware, widening the relevant prior art pool beyond aerospace-labelled filings.
The classification data shows thin coverage in areas adjacent to the dense G02B core, including athermal mount materials, on-orbit alignment sensing for segmented primaries, stray light baffle geometry specific to off-axis three-mirror-anastigmat designs, and mirror lightweighting lattice structures. These sub-areas carry far fewer records than the optical-elements core, but that should be treated as a starting hypothesis to verify with a targeted search, not a confirmed gap.
US20220003633A1, filed by Zhejiang University and published 2022-01-06, describes a device and method for detecting wavefront error using modal-based optimization phase retrieval built on extended Nijboer-Zernike theory. It uses a point light source, half mirror, test lens, plane mirror and image sensor to characterise wavefront error as Zernike polynomial coefficients, enabling one-time full-aperture measurement of a large-aperture optical component from a partially overexposed image. Anyone building a full-aperture wavefront metrology station using ENZ-based phase retrieval should review this claim set closely before finalising their optical measurement architecture.
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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.