Stranded NASA astronaut reports eerie noises coming from the defective Starliner capsule

NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore flew to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard Boeing Starliner on June 5, 2024. As Starliner approached the orbiting laboratory, the space capsule started experiencing glitches triggered by several helium leaks and issues with the reaction control thrusters. Their mission was supposed to last for about a week, but these issues forced NASA to re-schedule the return flight over and over, until it was ultimately postponed to February 2025. As if getting stuck in space for this long wasn’t enough, Wilmore recently reported hearing eerie noises coming from the Starliner capsule, according to FOX News.

On September 6, 2024, Starliner is set to undock from the ISS and descend to Earth, leaving its astronauts stranded in space, as NASA announced last month. The spaceship’s propulsion system has been rendered too defective to bring along the astronauts with it. At any time, it could crash into the Earth’s orbit, posing a danger to the astronauts’ lives. A few days before Starliner’s departure, when Wilmore heard these strange noises emitted by it, he instantly radioed Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

An audio recording of Wilmore's conversation with Mission Control was captured and shared by a Michigan-based meteorologist Rob Dale, according to Ars Technical. "I've got a question about Starliner," Wilmore said on the microphone. "There's a strange noise coming through the speaker... I don't know what's making it."

When the flight controllers said they couldn’t hear any sound, Wilmore, likely floating in the spacecraft, put his microphone near Starliner’s speaker to make the sound more audible on the radio. "Butch, that one came through," Mission Control said. "It was kind of like a pulsating noise, 'almost like a sonar ping,'" Wilmore replied, adding, "I’ll do it one more time and let you all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what’s going on."

People likened the bizarre sound emanating in the audio recording to be coming from things like “a nearby Russian submarine,” “a hostile non-human ship,” “space whales,” “ghosts in space,” “an electronic glitch,” and “Event Horizon.” However, for now, NASA’s flight engineers on Earth haven’t identified the source of this creepy sound.

As engineers investigate the cause of this mysterious sound, the uncrewed Starliner has already been programmed to undock from the ISS and return to Earth on autopilot. The craft, if it doesn’t crash mid-flight, is expected to land at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. NASA has announced that the entire landing event will be live-streamed for people to see.

Meanwhile, as Starliner has caused Williams and Wilmore to maroon in space for what seems like an indefinite time, they’re employing creative ways to spend their time onboard, other than the routine system tests and spacewalks. After the Starliner lands on September 7, the two astronauts will return home in February 2025 via Elon Musk’s SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft with two other crew members assigned to NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission.