NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) reported hearing a “strange noise” coming from the Boeing Starliner spacecraft on Saturday, just days before the craft was scheduled to leave the station and return to Earth on autopilot.
Astronaut Butch Wilmore radioed Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston to inquire about the noise.
In the recording of the conversation, Wilmore can be heard holding his phone on speaker so Mission Control can hear the noise he is referring to. A regular pulsating sound can be heard coming from Wilmore’s device.
“Butch, we heard that,” Mission Control said after initially not hearing it. “It was like a pulsating sound, almost like a sonar signal.”
NASA plans to send just two astronauts to the ISS instead of three to allow two stranded astronauts to return home after the Boeing Starliner crash
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft docking with the International Space Station’s Harmony module, as seen through a window of the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft docked at an adjacent port on July 3, 2024. (Associated Press via NASA)
“I’m going to do it again and have you all scratching your heads and seeing if you can figure out what’s going on,” Wilmore told Mission Control, playing the sound again.
Mission Control told Wilmore that the recordings would be forwarded and that they would let him know what they found.
Wilmore clarified that the sound was coming from speakers inside the Starliner.
The strange sound was first reported by Ars Technica, which cited a recording originally captured and shared by Michigan meteorologist Rob Dale.
NASA Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the International Space Station’s Harmony module and Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 13, 2024. (NASA)
Fox News Digital has reached out to Mission Control and Boeing to ask if the source of the sound has been identified.
The Starliner will undock from the ISS and land empty on autopilot in the New Mexico desert for return.
NASA decided it was too risky to send Wilmore and Sonny Williams back until February. The astronauts were originally scheduled to fly for a week in early June, but the mission has been plagued by problems after a thruster malfunction and a helium leak.
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Boeing had hoped that Starliner’s first crewed flight would help revive the troubled spacecraft program after years of delays and ballooning costs. The company had maintained that Starliner was safe based on all recent thruster tests, both in space and on the ground.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
