New answers tagged propulsion
1
There are a lot of ions in space already, adding a few from the thruster is not really that big of a deal. They are moving so fast that it won't really make a huge difference being neutral or not, they are going away from the spacecraft, and at the point where electrons are typically injected they are far enough away that it doesn't matter much.
All that ...
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Ion drive spacecraft need to eject a net neutral amount of charge. Otherwise, the spacecraft would become so charged that the ion exhaust would just be sucked right back to the spacecraft. It takes an absurd amount of voltage to charge something by only a small net amount of missing ions.
Neutralization is done by mounting electron emitters on the spacecraft,...
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