The 'expendable mass' is almost never a solid or liquid. It's the gaseous combustion exhaust or plasma exhaust from the satellite's thrusters. The advantage of gases is that they just expand and disperse fast enough to be too wispy to cause anything on impact.
However, there are a few systems that do use solid masses for obtaining a reaction force. A remarkable example is called a 'Yo-yo despinner' [1]. It was used in missions like Phoenix (Mars mission) and Dawn (Asteroid belt proto-planet mission). And yes, it does create space debris. But those space debris are probably somewhere in orbit around the sun. Nothing that those guys are going to be too worried about.
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The 'expendable mass' is almost never a solid or liquid. It's the gaseous combustion exhaust or plasma exhaust from the satellite's thrusters. The advantage of gases is that they just expand and disperse fast enough to be too wispy to cause anything on impact.
However, there are a few systems that do use solid masses for obtaining a reaction force. A remarkable example is called a 'Yo-yo despinner' [1]. It was used in missions like Phoenix (Mars mission) and Dawn (Asteroid belt proto-planet mission). And yes, it does create space debris. But those space debris are probably somewhere in orbit around the sun. Nothing that those guys are going to be too worried about.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-yo_de-spin