A mysterious sound coming from inside Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft launched an investigation by NASA’s Mission Control after it was reported by one of two astronauts who have been stranded in space due to issues with the spacecraft.
NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore radioed Mission Control in Houston on Saturday to flag the sounds that he said were coming from a speaker inside the Starliner space capsule, Ars Technica first reported.
“I’ve got a question about Starliner,” Wilmore says in a recording of his call, published by meteorologist Rob Dale. “There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker. … I don’t know what’s making it.”
Wilmore was able to hold up his microphone toward the source of the sound, allowing Mission Control to hear it too. The rhythmic sound was compared to the sound of a sonar ping.
“It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping,” Mission Control described it.
Wilmore allowed them to hear the sound again, and then asked them to “call us if you figure it out.”
A NASA representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday, but in a statement shared with a space-focused news outlet, the noise was blamed on the audio configuration between Starliner and the Space Station.
“The space station audio system is complex, allowing multiple spacecraft and modules to be interconnected, and it is common to experience noise and feedback,” read the statement obtained by the website NASA Space Flight. It added that the noise has “no technical impact to the crew, Starliner, or station operations,” including Starliner’s planned return to Earth on Friday.
Wilmore and fellow astronaut Suni Williams have been stuck in orbit since June, vastly extending what was supposed to be a one-week mission after their Boeing spacecraft was deemed likely unsafe for travel.
The spacecraft, which has experienced helium leaks and failed thrusters, will return without passengers, and Wilmore and Williams will hitch a ride back to Earth on a Space X capsule sometime in February, NASA said.