WidgetBlender LLC

System Engineering & Visualization, Prototype Development 

A woman owned Virginia, USA LLC


Major Awards 

First Place, Led Team With Crointel (2024)
NASA's Brilliant Minds for Pure Blue Skies Challenge

We proposed Space Laser-Enabled Propulsion (SLEP): The use of MEO based solar power collecting satellites (AKA, StarPower Stations), transforming solar power to electricity to power lasers that are aimed at high altitude aircraft with laser receivers that in turn focus energy on “laser ramjet engine” to provide unlimited time in air.  StarPower Stations, when over places with few aircraft, can also beam power to lunar bases in the lunar night, space craft for laser propulsion, orbital debris reduction and surface operations like night time cloud evaporation, tornado busting and so on ...

First Place, Led Team With Crointel (2022)
NASA Orbital Alchemy Challenge sponsored by NASA's Orbital Debris Office

We adapted asteroid mining concepts to breaking down and processing large abandoned satellites in LEO. WidgetBlender submitted SAFER (Satellite After Fully Enclosed Recycler) which included a summary of Crointel's BioLeach that proposed a solution to use reflected solar energy to break down, sort and refine parts of large satellites into useful inputs to other LEO operations.  Winning submission available on request.

Crointel also submitted a detailed BioLeach entry that WidgetBlender supported that won Third Place.

Second Place, Supporting Team Crointel (2022)
NASA's "Trash-to-Gas Ash Management" Challenge

Trash-to-gas reactors are considered a sustainable approach to both near- and long-term waste management during long-duration space missions. The primary goal of this challenge was to create actionable design concepts for ash removal from a trash-to-gas reactor in microgravity.  WidgetBlender supported Crointel with extensive device engineering and visualization collaboration. Visualization examples available on request.

Other Projects & Awards

Capture-less Orbital Debris Management System

A patent pending concept to reduce orbital debris risk to operational satellites using cubesats and ESPA class smallsats in a variety of operational modes.  This approach does not employ direct capture but instead uses directed thruster exhaust particles in very close proximity. Example of RPO = rendezvous proximity operations

Fourth Place (2023): Gravity Independent Particle Separator

Supporting Croitel in a challenge submission for NASA's Particle Partition Challenge. This challenge seeks to identify novel ways that fine carbon particles can be safely and efficiently removed from a Bosch reactor (used to recycle CO2 back to O2), without impacting the reactor’s performance. Won 4th place

Finalist: Enhanced Vibration Isolation -
Endohedral Fullerenes Factory

Worked with Crointel to create a "made in space" concept for Endohedral Fullerenes (specialized Buckyballs worth $100M/gram).  Contact us to get more info.

 

NASA Third Place(2023): Debris Skimmer

Worked with Crointel to adapt crossbow concepts to design a 3U cubesat that uses minimal fuel to deorbit many <10cm orbital objects in a single mission = an affordable orbital debris solution.

 

Services

System Engineering

High level engineering trade-off modeling, spreadsheeting, costing

Submission/Proposal Prep

Fusion 360 based visualization, rendering, Powerpoint slide decks, technical (the MIT) and business (the MBA) text

Prototype Design/Fabrication

Fusion 360 based CAD, 3D printing, prototype level electronics and PCB

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