Strange Noises Are Coming from Inside Boeing’s Starliner Spacecraft

On Saturday NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore noticed immoderate unusual noises emanating from a talker wrong the Starliner spacecraft.

“I’ve got a question astir Starliner,” Wilmore radioed down to Mission Control, astatine Johnson Space Center successful Houston. "There’s a unusual sound coming done the talker ... I don’t cognize what’s making it.”

Wilmore said helium was not definite if determination was immoderate oddity successful the transportation betwixt the presumption and the spacecraft causing the noise, oregon thing else. He asked the formation controllers successful Houston to spot if they could perceive to the audio wrong the spacecraft. A fewer minutes later, Mission Control radioed backmost that they were linked via “hardline” to perceive to audio wrong Starliner, which has present been docked to the International Space Station for astir 3 months.

Wilmore, seemingly floating successful Starliner, past enactment his microphone up to the talker wrong Starliner. Shortly thereafter, determination was an audible pinging that was rather distinctive. “Alright Butch, that ne came through,” Mission power radioed up to Wilmore. “It was benignant of similar a pulsing noise, astir similar a sonar ping.”

“I’ll bash it 1 much time, and I’ll fto y’all scratch your heads and spot if you tin fig retired what’s going on,” Wilmore replied. The odd, sonar-like audio past repeated itself. “Alright, implicit to you. Call america if you fig it out.”

A Space Oddity

A signaling of this audio, and Wilmore’s speech with Mission Control, was captured and shared by a Michigan-based meteorologist named Rob Dale.

It was not instantly wide what was causing the odd, and somewhat eerie noise. As Starliner flies to the abstraction station, it maintains communications with the abstraction presumption via a vigor frequence system. Once docked, however, determination is simply a hardline umbilical that carries audio.

Astronauts announcement specified oddities successful abstraction from clip to time. For example, during China’s archetypal quality spaceflight int 2003, astronaut Yang Liwei said helium heard what sounded similar an robust bucket being knocked by a woody hammer portion successful orbit. Later, scientists realized the sound was owed to tiny deformations successful the spacecraft owed to a quality successful unit betwixt its interior and outer walls.

This weekend’s sonar-like noises astir apt person a benign cause, and Wilmore surely did not dependable frazzled. But the unusual noises are worthy noting fixed the challenges that Boeing and NASA person had with the debut crewed formation of Starliner, including important helium leaks successful flight, and failing thrusters. NASA announced a week agone that, owed to uncertainty astir the flyability of Starliner, it would travel location without its archetypal unit of Wilmore and Suni Williams.

Starliner is present owed to alert backmost autonomously to Earth on Friday, September 6. Wilmore and Williams volition instrumentality to Earth adjacent February, flying aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft scheduled to motorboat with conscionable 2 astronauts aboriginal this month.

This communicative primitively appeared on Ars Technica.