Microdroplet emission on liquid metal surface at the development of Rayleigh instabilities — applications in cosmos

It has been shown that at charging and melting of the cosmic garbage particles by electron beam its intensive disintegration into very small droplets, whose dimension is 102–104 times smaller than the dimension of an original droplet, is possible. This process occurs only in the case, when the particle charge significantly exceeds the Rayleigh limit, determining the instability threshold for charged droplets. The consideration was carried out for garbage particles, having dimensions 0.1-1 cm. The possibility for the creation of a reactive engine of small thrust on a base of microdroplet emission phenomenon in LMIS was studied. It has been shown that such thrusters may have an advantage over the ion thruster for neutralization of the cosmic object body. For the solution of both these problems we have taken into account the compensating ion current, coming from the cosmic plasma to the negatively charged particle (satellite) surface.