One of NASA’s astronauts stranded aboard the International Space Station reported a “strange noise” coming from Boeing’s Starliner aircraft.
Butch Wilmore contacted Johnson Space Center in Houston to share his concerns just days before the spacecraft is scheduled to undock from the ISS, jettison and attempt to return to Earth on autopilot.
“I have a question about Starliner. There’s a strange noise coming out of the speaker and I don’t know if it can be connected to Starliner… I don’t know what’s causing it,” he said.
Mission Control confirms to Butch that they can set up 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 message came through. It was like a pulsating noise, almost like a sonar sound.”
Wilmore and fellow astronaut Suni Williams (pictured) have been stranded on the ISS since June 5, when they arrived on a Boeing jet for what was supposed to be a week-long stay. But the Starliner is now set to return to Earth without them after suffering thruster problems and helium leaks.
Wilmore contacted the Johnson Space Center in Houston about what he called a “strange noise” just days before they were set to undock from the ISS, jettison and attempt to return to Earth on autopilot.
Butch plays the sound once more, which is successfully received by mission control.
“I’ll let you figure that out,” Wilmore says.
“Nice recording, thanks Butch,” Mission Control replies. “We’ll pass it along to the team and let them know what we find.”
They ask again if there is any other noise and confirm that it is indeed coming from the speaker.
Wilmore and fellow astronaut Suni Williams have been stranded on the International Space Station since June 5, when they arrived on a Boeing jet for what was supposed to be a weeklong stay. But the Starliner is now set to return to Earth without them after suffering thruster problems and helium leaks.
The couple are not scheduled to return to Earth until 2025, when one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX ships is scheduled to ferry them home.
In the latest audio about the problematic plane, Wilmore tells Mission Control that he hopes they will “scratch their heads and see if they can figure out what’s going on.”
Mission Control can only tell Wilmore that they will broadcast the news and report back if they discover anything.
Williams and Wilmore launched to the ISS aboard Boeing’s Starliner three months ago.
The scandal-plagued Starliner — which was built and developed using more than $4 billion in taxpayer money — was plagued by technical difficulties in the weeks leading up to launch, and even on the day of.
The spacecraft safely transported Williams and Wilmore to the ISS, but by the time it arrived there it had suffered more helium leaks and five of its 28 thrusters had failed.
At a press conference on August 24, NASA officials announced that it would be too risky to bring astronauts home on the faulty Starliner.
Instead, they will return home aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov to the ISS on Sept. 24, according to a NASA statement released last week.
Suni Williams (pictured) and Wilmore launched to the ISS aboard Boeing’s Starliner on June 5.
The scandal-plagued Starliner — which was built and developed using more than $4 billion in taxpayer money — was plagued by helium leaks and propellant problems in the weeks leading up to launch, and even on launch day.
This means that Williams and Wilmore will remain on the ISS until at least February 2025.
Its empty Starliner capsule is scheduled to undock early next month and attempt to return on autopilot and land in the New Mexico desert.
The decision was humiliating for Boeing, which had struggled for years to get its Starliner program off the ground until it was bailed out at the last minute by its biggest competitor.
“We’ve been through so many embarrassing situations lately that we’re under a microscope. This has just made it a hundred times worse,” one employee anonymously told the New York Post.
“We hate SpaceX,” he added. “We talk shit about them all the time and now they’re bailing us out.”
At this time, it is unclear whether Starliner will ever be able to complete a crewed mission to the ISS.
NASA is planning to decommission the ISS in 2030, which would give Boeing just five years to fix Starliner’s technical problems and successfully send astronauts to and from space.
To put this into perspective, it’s been five years since Starliner’s first failed uncrewed test flight.
But Boeing may retire Starliner before that deadline is reached, as the company has already invested $1.6 billion in developing the spacecraft.
