Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft makes strange noise, astronauts puzzled
The Boeing Starliner is about to return to Earth without a crew. On Saturday, one of the astronauts asked for help to understand the origin of a “strange noise” coming from one of the spacecraft’s speakers.
On Saturday, astronaut Butch Wilmore alerted NASA’s Mission Control to an unexplained “strange noise” coming from one of the Starliner’s speakers. The spacecraft is set to undock from the International Space Station (ISS) and make its unmanned journey back to Earth in a few days.
In the NASASpaceflight forum, a portion of the conversation between the astronaut and Mission Control was shared by meteorologist Rob Dale, as reported by Ars Technica.
The “strange noise” starts at 45 seconds in the audio clip below. It is heard after astronaut Wilmore explains the situation and admits to not knowing what is causing it.
The astronaut let the noise play for a few more seconds, until Mission Control asked: “Just to make sure we’re on the same page, this is coming from the Starliner’s speaker; you don’t notice anything else, no other noise, no strange setup?” Wilmore confirmed that everything else was normal.
For now, the origin of the “strange noise” remains unknown.
Boeing’s spacecraft has been docked at the ISS since early June, and engineers have been trying to resolve issues that arose during its first crewed flight. As reported, the two astronauts aboard, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, will only return home in February 2025 aboard a Crew Dragon from SpaceX.
