Q&A: John Richardson and John Belcher on Voyager 1’s crossing and interstellar exploration
On Sept. 12, scientists announced that NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft had gone where no man or machine has gone before: beyond the solar system, and into interstellar space. According to data from the probe, Voyager 1 likely broke through the heliosphere — the bubble of charged particles given off by the sun — in August 2012. Its twin, Voyager 2, is not far behind; scientists estimate that it, too, will cross into interstellar space in the near future. Both spacecraft house plasma sensors developed at MIT. MIT News spoke with MIT’s John Richardson, principal investigator of the plasma science instrument and a principal research scientist at the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research; and John Belcher, co-investigator of the Voyager mission’s Plasma Science Experiment and a professor of physics, about what’s in store for both probes as they explore the interstellar medium. Q: Scientists had been looking for signs...