Boeing Starliner making ‘strange noise’

American astronaut Butch Wilmore has asked NASA to help investigate what’s causing sonar-like sounds emanating from a speaker inside the Starliner spacecraft.

“There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker,” Wilmore is heard saying in a recording of his communication with Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“I don’t know what’s making it,” the astronaut said, before asking the NASA crew in Houston to configure their call so he could show them the noise. He said it was coming from the speaker inside the Starliner.

A few moments later, the crew member confirmed they could hear “kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping.”

"Alright, over to you. Call us if you figure it out," Wilmore said after letting NASA’s ground team listen to the sound one more time. A NASA Space Flight forum member captured and shared the interaction's recording online.

NASA is yet to confirm what might be causing the strange noise. Astronaut Chris Hadfield said in a post on X that the pinging sound was one of “several noises I’d prefer not to hear inside my spaceship.”

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

undefined Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) September 1, 2024

While some social media users said the mysterious sound was “some Stanley Kubrick-level horrorshow,” others pointed out the reason behind it was probably much more mundane. Things like small deformations in the spacecraft or “atypical audio feedback” are cited as some of the potential causes.

Neither astronaut Wilmore nor NASA’s crew in Houston seemed upset about the sound but the incident adds to the concerns surrounding the troubled Starliner mission, which is plagued by gas leaks and malfunctioning thrusters.

Butch Wilmore and fellow astronaut Sunita Williams were part of the debut Starliner flight, but NASA decided it was too dangerous for them to use the spacecraft for their journey back to Earth.

Starliner is scheduled to return uncrewed on September 6th. Meanwhile, Wilmore and Williams will remain stranded in the International Space Station until February, when they will hitch a ride back home with the SpaceX Crew-9 mission.