Experimental Study of the Laser Ablation Plasma Flow From the Liquid Ga-In Target

The use of recoil momentum from a laser ablation flare is found to be one of the promising ways for development of low-propulsion thrusters for launching of microsatellites and nanosatellites. This paper suggests using a liquid Ga-In alloy as the ablated body, instead of a solid-state one. A Nd:YAG laser with the output of 0.3 mJ and the pulse duration of 2.7 ns (full width at half maximum) was used for ablation. Charge-resolved ion energy distributions of the laser-ablation plasma were studied by means of an energy-mass analyzer EQP Hiden Analytical. Angular characteristics of plasma flows were retrieved from a measurement of ion saturation currents on a set of collectors placed at different axial and azimuthal angles relative to the target surface normal. It was found that the thrust from the liquid-metal target remains very stable during a long operation time, while the lifetime of the target is limited only by the working body supply.