One of the stranded NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station reported a “strange noise” coming from Boeing’s Starliner aircraft.
Butch Wilmore contacted the Johnson Space Center in Houston to express his concerns just days before the craft was set to undock from the ISS and return to Earth on autopilot.
“I have a question about Starliner. There’s a strange sound coming through the speaker and I don’t know if you can connect to the Starliner… I don’t know what’s causing it,” he said.
Mission control confirms to Butch that they can configure a way to play the sound. Wilmore then holds the phone up to the Starliner’s speakers and a sound is heard.
After a failed first attempt, mission control responds: ‘Butch, that one got through. It was kind of a pulsing sound, almost like a sonar ping.’
Wilmore and fellow astronaut Suni Williams (pictured) have been stuck on the ISS since June 5, when they arrived on Boeing’s plane for what was supposed to be a week-long stay. But the Starliner is now set to return to Earth without them after being plagued by booster problems and helium leaks.
Wilmore contacted the Johnson Space Center in Houston about what he called a “strange noise” just days before they were to undock from the ISS, empty, and attempt to return to Earth on autopilot.
Butch plays the sound again, and it is successfully received by mission control.
“I’ll leave it up to you to figure it out,” Wilmore says.
“Good recording, thanks Butch,” mission control replies. “We’ll pass it on to the team and let you know what we find.”
They ask again if there is any more sound and confirm that it is indeed coming from the speaker.
Wilmore and fellow astronaut Suni Williams have been stuck on the ISS since June 5, when they arrived on Boeing’s plane for what was supposed to be a week-long hiatus. But the Starliner is now set to return to Earth without them after being plagued by booster problems and helium leaks.
The pair will not return to Earth until 2025, when one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX ships will bring them home.
In the last audio recording of the troubled plane, Wilmore tells Mission Control that he hopes they will “pick your brains and see if you can figure out what’s going on.”
Mission Control can only tell Wilmore that they will pass on the news and report back if they discover anything.
Three months ago, Williams and Wilmore flew to the ISS on Boeing’s Starliner.
The scandal-plagued Starliner, built and developed with more than $4 billion in taxpayer money, was plagued by technical problems in the weeks leading up to launch and even on the day itself.
The spacecraft safely delivered Williams and Wilmore to the ISS, but by the time it arrived, helium particles were leaking again and five of its 28 thrusters had failed.
At a press conference on August 24, NASA officials said it would be too risky to take the astronauts home in the disabled Starliner.
Instead, they will return home on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, which will launch NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov to the ISS on Sept. 24, NASA said in a statement last week.
Suni Williams (pictured) and Wilmore launched to the ISS aboard Boeing’s Starliner on June 5
The scandal-plagued Starliner, built and developed with more than $4 billion in taxpayer money, was plagued by helium leaks and booster problems in the weeks leading up to launch and even on the day itself.
This means that Williams and Wilmore will remain on the ISS until February 2025 at the latest.
Their empty Starliner capsule will undock early next month and will attempt to return on autopilot and land in the New Mexico desert.
The decision was humiliating for Boeing, which has struggled for years to get its Starliner program off the ground, only to be rescued at the last minute by its biggest competitor.
“We’ve had so many embarrassing situations lately, we’re under a microscope. This just made it 100 times worse,” an anonymous employee told the New York Post.
“We hate SpaceX,” he added. “We talk about them all the time, and now they’re saving us.”
It is currently unclear whether Starliner will ever be able to complete a manned mission to the ISS.
NASA plans to retire the ISS by 2030, leaving Boeing with just five years to fix Starliner’s technical issues and successfully send astronauts to and from space.
To put that in perspective, it’s been five years since Starliner’s first unmanned test flight failed.
However, it is possible that Boeing will phase out the Starliner before the deadline is reached, as the company has already poured $1.6 billion into developing the spacecraft.
