Unveiling the Technological Outcomes of Microgravity Research Through Patent Analysis: Implications for Business and Policy

The relevance of microgravity research—i.e., research activities related to the possibility to generate and/or take advantage of an environment scantly affected by gravitational effects—is becoming more and more important for both policymakers and executives, not only in the aerospace domain but also in many other domains. However, tracing the evolution of the technological landscape deriving from microgravity research is very complex due to the fast-growing solutions emerging from such a research activity as well as their diversified nature in terms of actors and domains of relevance. This makes difficult to identify/foresee the most exploited/promising solutions related to microgravity research, set the research budget for subsequent R&D activities, recognize relevant business opportunities, and regulate access to space. Therefore, this article aims to delve into the technological outcomes of microgravity research, so revealing their main development trends (i.e., temporal trends, the geographic origins of related solutions, main technological areas, key research organizations, and the highly impacting technologies) to provide visions of the future (i.e., technology foresight) and derive implications for business and policy. To do so, we collected and analyzed a unique sample of 4401 patents, applied between 1960 and 2020, in the wide domain of microgravity research.