Stranded in space along with Sunita Williams, Nasa astronaut Barry Wilmore reports ‘strange noise’ from Boeing’s Starliner | Technology News
Just days after Nasa officially confirmed that Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams will return to Earth using SpaceX’s Dragon capsule in 2025, more issues about Boeing’s Starliner have started to appear. This further supports Nasa’s decision to use the tried-and-tested Crew Dragon capsule instead of Starliner to bring the astronauts back to Earth safely.
According to a report by Ars Technica, astronaut Butch Wilmore has sent the following message to Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston: “I’ve got a question about Starliner. There’s a strange noise coming through the speaker … I don’t know what’s making it.”
Wilmore noticed this strange noise from the speaker when he was apparently floating in the Starliner, which, according to the mission control centre, “was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping”. Meteorologist Rob Dale shared the recorded audio recording.
It is quite common for astronauts to notice and report such anomalies, and most of these might not significantly impact the spacecraft’s functionalities. As of now, there is not much information about what is causing the Starliner speaker to produce a pulsing noise, and the mission control centre is trying to figure it out.
The Starliner has been docked at the International Space Station (ISS) for over three months due to helium leakage and several thrusters’ failure. The test crew flight was supposed to return to Earth in just a week, but it is now scheduled to fly back to Earth empty on September 6.
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