TransAstra Receives Patent for Asteroid Mining and Propellant Delivery System

LOS ANGELES, October 30, 2026 /CourierPR/ -- TransAstra, a space technology company based in Los Angeles, has been awarded a new U.S. patent for an end-to-end system to mine asteroids and deliver propellant in space.

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. 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.

In addition to the new patent, TransAstra has received three other grants over the past year. A U.S. patent for deployable lunar landing pads, covering inflatable structures to improve the safety of lunar landings, was granted. A European patent protecting TransAstra's Omnivore™ solar thermal thruster technology was also awarded. Lastly, 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 was issued.

TransAstra Corporation is a 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.