Now there’s an eerie, sonar-like sound coming from one of the Starliner’s speakers

The Starliner is scheduled to return to the International Space Station and make its return trip to Earth inactive in a few days, but it apparently still has a few mysteries left to throw at the team before it departs. On Saturday, astronaut Butch Wilmore notified NASA’s Mission Control about an unexplained “strange noise” coming from a speaker in space, which you can hear in an audio clip of the shared conversation. NASASpaceflight meteorologist Rob Dale’s field (seen by Ars Technica). It starts at about the 45 second mark, with a strong beat. “I don’t know what made it happen,” Wilmore said.

After making sure they heard the sound, when Wilmore brought his microphone to the speaker, the air traffic controller in Houston said, “It was like a loud noise, almost like a sonar ping.” Wilmore then let it play for about 20 seconds before hanging up. “Just to make sure I’m on the same page, this is coming from the speaker on the Starliner,” asked Mission Control, “don’t you see anything else, any other noises, any strange things there?” The astronaut notes that everything else seems normal.

It is not yet clear what caused the noise. The Boeing spacecraft has been docked with the ISS since early June, and since then engineers have been busy trying to get to the bottom of the problems that arose during their first crewed flight. When Starliner finally returns to Earth on September 6, it will leave its crew — Wilmore and NASA astronaut Suni Williams — behind on the ISS, where they will continue to work for the next several months while they wait to board home. from SpaceX in February 2025.