On April 23, 2026, the U.S. patent office published application US 20260109490A1, assigned to Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and titled "Positioning Satellite." A published application is not a granted patent; it is a roughly eighteen-month-delayed window into work that was filed earlier. This one describes a method for locating a flying object that travels from Earth toward the Moon or a planet, using positioning signals transmitted from ground stations whose coordinates are known in an Earth-fixed reference frame. The application sits in the cosmonautics classification B64G, and its independent claim describes a positioning satellite flying in a stationary or quasi-zenith orbit.

The signal here is one of direction. Terrestrial positioning—GPS, and Japan's Quasi-Zenith Satellite System, the kind of regional augmentation Mitsubishi Electric has long built ground and space hardware for—works because receivers can see a constellation overhead. A vehicle traveling toward the Moon leaves that coverage behind. An application describing how to determine a flying object's position on a trajectory away from Earth points to navigation work aimed beyond the band where existing satellite-positioning constellations operate. The filing indicates the company is investing in the location problem for cislunar and beyond-Earth flight, not only the Earth-surface positioning its existing systems serve.

A flying object flies in an outer space from the earth to the moon or a planet or near the moon or a planet.— POSITIONING SATELLITE, US20260109490A1

What the record shows, and what it does not

The same invention also appears as an issued grant, US 12606324B2 ("Positioning method, lunar positioning system, and positioning satellite"), which carries the same inventor and the same B64G classification. A published application paired with a granted counterpart on the same concept indicates the filing has moved through prosecution rather than sitting as a speculative disclosure. The grant's description details a satellite with a control device, communication device, propulsion device and attitude-control device—the elements of an operational spacecraft, not a paper concept.

The space-navigation corner of the patent record is thin: a single week's publications surface only a handful of beyond-Earth positioning filings, and Mitsubishi Electric's broader published-application activity is concentrated in semiconductors and power electronics rather than spacecraft. That makes this application stand out as a discrete signal rather than part of a dense cluster. The honest read is narrow: one published application and its granted twin describe a method for positioning objects on lunar-bound trajectories. The filing tells us where some R&D effort went; it does not tell us about program timelines, customers, or whether the method is being built into a fielded system. Those are commercial questions the patent file does not answer. What it does show, factually, is a company extending its positioning-navigation work into the region between Earth and the Moon.

For a business reader, the relevance is the lane the filing stakes out. Cislunar positioning is an emerging area as more missions target the Moon, and the published application places Mitsubishi Electric's name on a method in that space. Whether that translates into products or contracts is not disclosed; the application is a forward-looking marker of where the company has been directing navigation R&D.