The same robot that can grab a satellite to refuel it can grab a dead one to drag it out of a crowded orbit. US10994867B2, granted to Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation on May 4, 2021, continues the company's servicing patent family with the same "spacecraft servicing devices and related assemblies, systems, and methods" title that runs through grants in 2020, 2022, and beyond.
The CPC fingerprint is identical to the family: B64G 1/1078 (in-orbit servicing or assembly), B64G 1/40 and 1/402 (propulsion arrangements), and B64G 1/646 (docking). That consistency across grants is the point — Northrop is building a fence, not a single post.
The mechanism is capture and controlled relocation. The servicer mates with a client and then provides propulsion and attitude control for it. Whether the destination is back to a working slot (life extension) or up to a graveyard orbit (disposal) is an operational choice; the apparatus is the same. That dual use is what makes the family commercially potent — one hardware platform addresses both the life-extension market and the emerging debris-disposal market.
For portfolio readers, the lesson is in the continuation pattern. A publication is not a grant, and a single grant is rarely a moat; but a multi-year chain of grants under one title, with stable CPC and overlapping inventors, is how an incumbent locks down a capability before competitors can establish their own priority dates.
The caveat this desk always makes: continuations refine and extend scope, they do not infinitely broaden it. Each grant in the family claims specific embodiments. But taken together they map Northrop's deliberate, methodical claim to the on-orbit-servicing franchise — one of the few areas of new-space where the patent trail and a flown, paying capability genuinely coincide.