A software glitch is making NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft act a little bit haunted this Halloween season.
On October 17, Voyager 1 switched its main radio transmitter to a different frequency, leaving its flight team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confused at the spacecraft’s apparent silence. As soon as the team figured out the problem and started listening for the new frequency, Voyager 1 shut off its main transmitter and switched over to one that hasn’t been used since 1981 — one that sends home a faint, almost ghostly signal from 15 billion miles away in the dark.
