Starliner is scheduled to undock from the Worldwide Area Station and make its return trip to Earth uncrewed in only a matter of days, but it surely apparently nonetheless has just a few new mysteries left in it to throw on the crew earlier than it departs. On Saturday, astronaut Butch Wilmore alerted NASA’s Mission Management about an unexplained “unusual noise” coming from a speaker within the spacecraft, which you’ll be able to hear in an audio clip of the dialog shared on a NASASpaceflight discussion board by meteorologist Rob Dale (noticed by Ars Technica). It begins at across the 45-second mark, ringing out on a gradual beat. “I don’t know what’s making it,” Wilmore mentioned.
After confirming they might hear the sound too, as soon as Wilmore introduced his mic over to the speaker, the flight controller in Houston mentioned, “It was type of like a pulsing noise, nearly like a sonar ping.” Wilmore then lets it play for about 20 seconds extra earlier than wrapping up the decision. “Simply to verify I’m on the identical web page, that is emanating from the speaker in Starliner,” Mission Management requested, “you don’t discover the rest, another noises, any bizarre configs in there?” The astronaut notes that all the pieces else appears regular.
It’s nonetheless unclear what prompted the sound. The Boeing spacecraft has been docked with the ISS since early June, and engineers have since had their arms full attempting to unravel the problems that arose throughout its first crewed flight. When Starliner lastly heads again to Earth on September 6, it’ll be leaving its crew — Wilmore and NASA astronaut Suni Williams — behind on the ISS, the place they’ll proceed to work for the following few months whereas they look ahead to a ride home from SpaceX in February 2025.
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