NASA Concern: Strange Sounds in Starliner Spacecraft
NASA’s Boeing-built Starliner spacecraft is having more problems. It started with helium leaks and propulsion problems, but now it’s also making strange and disturbing sounds, which one of the astronauts recorded.
- Strange sounds in the spaceship
- Signals in space, like a hammer blow
- Space X will take over astronauts
On June 6, the Starliner with two astronauts reached the International Space Station in Earth orbit. Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams were supposed to spend only eight days on it, and then return to Earth. However, during the mission, there was a failure. The maneuvering engines failed, and there were helium leaks. In view of these problems, NASA decided that the astronauts would remain in orbit, waiting for a new, efficient ship, and the Starliner would return to Earth alone using autopilot.
Strange sounds in the spaceship
As the Starliner, ready to be sent back to Earth, waited for liftoff, strange sounds began to emerge from the speakers mounted in the cabin. Barry “Butch” Wilmore radioed the Johnson Space Center in Houston. So that mission control could hear the disturbing sounds, he put a microphone up to the ship’s speakers.
“I have a question about the Starliner,” Wilmore said. “There’s a strange sound coming from the speaker… I don’t know what’s causing it.”
After listening to it, Mission Control said the sounds resembled “something like a pulsing sound, almost like a sonar signal.”
“I’ll let you all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what’s going on. Call us if you figure it out,” Wilmore said, but the source of the signal has not yet been determined.
Commentators on the nasaspaceflight.com forum believe that the cause of the regularly recurring sounds may be impulses from the ship’s internal clock, but this information has not been officially confirmed.
Signals in space, like a hammer blow
As The Guardian reports, unusual sounds in space are nothing new. They were first recorded and made public by American meteorologist Rob Dale. Unusual sounds were also heard in 2003 by China’s first astronaut, Yang Liwei, during the Shenzhou 5 mission. He claimed that they resembled the noise of a hammer striking metal.
Space X will take over astronauts
Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams will spend about six months in space instead of the planned eight days. NASA has announced that due to the Starliner failure, it will return to Earth without them. The astronauts will probably be taken home by the Crew Dragon spacecraft prepared by SpaceX, a competitor to Boeing. This will happen in February 2025 as part of a rotational astronaut mission.
