A question for the physicists or people that know about the subject: does plasma affect circuits? I read somewhere that alpha particles do affect them. I'm just curious. It might well be a stupid question. Pardon for my ignorance.
1) The electronics on board Voyager (and all spacecraft we've launched) are pretty well shielded.
2) The density of the plasma in interplanetary (now interstellar) space is very, very low. What Voyager is measuring is not the direct particles, but the oscillations of them. (Radio waves)
Don Gurnett @ the U. of Iowa has been a part of many of these missions - plasma receivers have been on nearly every major mission since Voyager. (Esp. Galileo to Jupiter and Cassini to Saturn.)
Here's a link to the research group at the U. of Iowa (the same group that published today's paper in Science) - there are some good introductory articles on the instruments and the physics behind them:
To expand on #2, the environment around Voyager 1 is significantly lower pressure and density than the most extreme ultra-high-vacuum conditions humans have ever managed to create on Earth.
