‘It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping,’ said Mission Control.
NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore was onboard the International Space Station on Saturday when he reported hearing a strange noise coming from the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that is scheduled to finally return to Earth this week after technical issues left crew members stranded at the ISS for longer than expected.
The crew will now be rescued by a SpaceX’s Dragon 2 spacecraft while the Boeing Starliner returns to Earth crewless on Friday.
After telling Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, he was hearing an odd sound, Wilmore asked them to take a listen.
“Alright Butch, that one came through,” Mission Control told the astronaut. “It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping.”
Hear a NASA recording of the strange noise below:
NEWS 🚨: Astronauts are reporting that Boeing Starliner is emitting strange “sonar like noises”
This is the real audio of it:
pic.twitter.com/iMuIkFfj6U— Latest in space (@latestinspace) September 1, 2024
“I’ll do it one more time, and I’ll let y’all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what’s going on,” Wilmore told his colleagues back on Earth. “Alright, over to you. Call us if you figure it out.”
Wilmore and his co-worker Sunita “Suni” Williams plan on staying at the ISS for another six months until the SpaceX Dragon capsule takes them home in February.
NASA responded to Space News, saying the sound has now stopped and blaming the noise on “feedback.”
“The feedback from the speaker was the result of an audio configuration between the space station and Starliner,” the agency said. “The space station audio system is complex, allowing multiple spacecraft and modules to be interconnected, and it is common to experience noise and feedback.”
Is NASA covering up something bizarre out in space or was the anomaly really just a technical issue?
