The application of microfabricated field emitters to space tethers and charge management on spacecraft

The trends of electric propulsion and smaller satellites are bringing the worlds of vacuum microelectronics and spacecraft together by highlighting the benefits that vacuum microelectronics can provide to many aerospace applications. The resulting interest in field emission and field ionization are a natural consequence of the space environment being a vacuum, or more specifically plasma, similar to the working environment of vacuum microelectronics. This overlap developing between both fields may result in vacuum microelectronics being flight-tested on satellites in the next few years. Missions are already being planned, and hardware developed, for testing of field emission cathodes; and the rapid trend to smaller and less expensive satellites is improving the chances that these devices will soon fly. The potential applications vary from new sensor concepts, to charge management approaches, and propellant-less propulsion systems. Eventually, field emission and field ionization devices may, be as common aboard spacecraft as electrostatic dischargers are aboard commercial aircraft