Things have been difficult for the Starliner. Now they’ve become just plain weird.
The spacecraft is making a strange noise and no one knows why.
NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore contacted Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on Saturday to notify the team of the issue, Ars Technica reported.
“I’ve got a question about Starliner,” Wilmore said in the exchange with a Mission Control official. “There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker … I don’t know what’s making it.”
Wilmore then put the microphone to the speaker inside the Starliner so that Mission Control could take a recording of the sound. After hearing it, the official described it as “kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping.”
Wilmore said he couldn’t be sure if the weird noise had something to do with the connection between the station and the spacecraft, or if something else was causing it. NASA will now be examining the sound more closely to see if it can work out why it’s happening.
Commenting on the situation, retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield said: “There are several noises I’d prefer not to hear inside my spaceship, including this one that Boeing Starliner is now making.”
There are several noises I'd prefer not to hear inside my spaceship, including this one that @Boeing Starliner is now making. pic.twitter.com/NMMPMo5dtt
— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) September 1, 2024
The mysterious sound may well be nothing to worry about, but NASA will no doubt be keen to try to pinpoint why it’s happening.
The incident comes just days before NASA is planning to bring home the Starliner without the crew that traveled on it to the space station.
The Boeing-made spacecraft arrived at the station with Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard in early June in the vehicle’s first-ever crewed flight.
But the Starliner had trouble with some of its thrusters as it approached the ISS, and a number of helium leaks were also discovered.
The issues prompted NASA to extend the mission while it investigated whether the vehicle was safe enough to bring home Wilmore and Williams. Last week, the agency finally decided that, out of an abundance of caution, it would fly the Starliner home empty, with Wilmore and Williams returning to Earth on a SpaceX spacecraft in February of next year.
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