The first time he tried, Mission Control said they couldn’t hear anything.
So Butch tried a second time — and waited.
This time, the response came back positive.
From 217 miles below, back on earth: “Butch, that one came through.”
According to Fox News:
A NASA astronaut at the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday reported hearing a “strange noise” coming from the Boeing Starliner spacecraft just days before it is set to leave the station and return to Earth on autopilot.
The astronaut, Butch Wilmore, radioed Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston to inquire about the noise.
On an audio recording of the exchange, Wilmore holds up a phone to the speakers so that Mission Control could hear the noise he was referring to. A pulsating sound emanating at steady intervals can be heard through Wilmore’s device.
ADVERTISEMENT“Butch, that one came through,” Mission Control says after not hearing it the first time. “It was kind of like a pulsating noise, almost like a sonar ping.”
Check out this crazy audio of the interaction between the ground teams and the ISS:
Is #Boeing #Starliner haunted? Or is someone banging its door with a metal plate & trying to enter?
What’s this weird noise that #NASA astronaut #ButchWilmore has been hearing from Starliner’s speaker? Electronic/RF Interference?
Listen carefully…☠️👇#space #science #tech pic.twitter.com/JQGBenWZOc— Sidharth.M.P (@sdhrthmp) September 1, 2024
According to the technology news site Ars Technica:
On Saturday NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore noticed some strange noises emanating from a speaker inside the Starliner spacecraft.
“I’ve got a question about Starliner,” Wilmore radioed down to Mission Control, at Johnson Space Center in Houston. “There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker … I don’t know what’s making it.”
Wilmore said he was not sure if there was some oddity in the connection between the station and the spacecraft causing the noise, or something else. He asked the flight controllers in Houston to see if they could listen to the audio inside the spacecraft. A few minutes later, Mission Control radioed back that they were linked via “hardline” to listen to audio inside Starliner, which has now been docked to the International Space Station for nearly three months.
Wilmore, apparently floating in Starliner, then put his microphone up to the speaker inside Starliner. Shortly thereafter, there was an audible pinging that was quite distinctive. “Alright Butch, that one came through,” Mission control radioed up to Wilmore. “It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping.”
“I’ll do it one more time, and I’ll let y’all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what’s going on,” Wilmore replied. The odd, sonar-like audio then repeated itself. “Alright, over to you. Call us if you figure it out.”
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived onboard the International Space Station back in June, and were originally supposed to have returned back to earth by now, but problems have plagued the mission and now there are plans to bring Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft back to earth without the two astronauts because of safety concerns.
According to NPR reporting:
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is scheduled to fly home on Sept. 6 — more than 12 weeks from the initial return date and without the crew that originally accompanied it.
In a statement, NASA said Starliner will undock from the International Space Station around 6 p.m. ET “pending weather and operational readiness.” The troubled spacecraft is expected to touch down shortly after midnight on a landing zone in New Mexico before it returns to Boeing’s Starliner factory at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The Starliner will leave behind astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams, who flew abroad Starliner back in June. The pair is slated to return in a capsule built by a competing company, Space X, in February.
As of the time of this writing, NASA has not been able to identify the source of the noise, or determine if it is serious or benign in nature, leaving everyone to guess.
Is #Boeing #Starliner haunted? Or is someone banging its door with a metal plate & trying to enter?
What's this weird noise that #NASA astronaut #ButchWilmore has been hearing from Starliner's speaker? Electronic/RF Interference?
Listen carefully…☠️👇#space #science #tech pic.twitter.com/JQGBenWZOc— Sidharth.M.P (@sdhrthmp) September 1, 2024
This situation is ongoing and will be updated if any new information becomes available.
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