Boeing’s Starliner was mysteriously blooping like a submarine in space. Here’s why.

UPDATE: Sep. 2, 2024, 7:00 p.m. EDT In a statement released to Mashable on Monday, Sept. 2, NASA said the pulsing sound astronaut Butch Wilmore heard coming from a speaker inside Starliner was the result of an audio configuration between the International Space Station and Starliner and has since stopped. Because many spacecraft are interconnected through the station’s audio system, noise and feedback are common, the space agency said: “The speaker feedback Wilmore reported has no technical impact to the crew, Starliner, or station operations, including Starliner’s uncrewed undocking from the station no earlier than Friday, Sept. 6.”

Apparently, Boeing’s troubled spaceship isn’t done giving NASA some brain teasers while it’s still in space.

Starliner’s commander, astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore, asked Houston mission control on Saturday why the test capsule had started emitting strange noises from a speaker. At first the sounds weren’t audible, then Wilmore, 61, captured a better recording: an unnerving, perpetual blooping, similar to the pulse of a submarine’s sonar ping.

“I’ll let y’all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what’s going on,” Wilmore said in his Southern drawl over the radio.

Flight controllers didn’t seem to immediately know the cause or source of the noise. Neither NASA nor Boeing, the spacecraft’s developer, responded to questions from Mashable on Sunday regarding the sounds, and it was unclear whether the issue persisted. The only unusual thing Wilmore had observed at the time was the sound transmitted over the speaker. No other problems or weird configurations were happening within the capsule, he said.

Boeing’s Starliner experienced propulsion problems during its crewed testflight in June 2024.
Credit: NASA

On Monday, after Mashable’s report published, NASA responded to the inquiry, saying the pulsing sound coming from a speaker in Starliner has since stopped. The sound was the result of an audio configuration between the International Space Station and Starliner — a common occurrence due to the many interconnected spacecraft and modules to the audio system, the U.S. space agency said.

“The speaker feedback Wilmore reported has no technical impact to the crew, Starliner, or station operations, including Starliner’s uncrewed undocking from the station no earlier than Friday, Sept. 6,” NASA said in an emailed statement.

Though the agency recently decided Wilmore and his crewmate, pilot Sunita “Suni” Williams, would not return on Starliner but a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, Starliner remains docked at the space station some 250 miles above Earth. It is expected to stay there until departing for a robotic landing without passengers no earlier than 6:04 p.m. ET Friday, Sept. 6.

If all goes as planned, Starliner will touch down at the Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico about six hours later. A system of parachutes and air bags should cushion its drop over the desert shortly after midnight on Sept. 7.

The pulsing sounds were the latest in a series of quandaries related to Starliner, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in June for its first test flight carrying people. The issue was first reported by Ars Technica on Sunday, based on a posting of the space station chatter in a NASASpaceflight.com forum.

Boeing Starliner’s test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will return to Earth on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in February 2025.
Credit: NASA

Veteran astronauts Wilmore and Williams were in limbo this summer while NASA leadership and Boeing managers discussed whether Starliner was safe to bring them home. During their flight to the space station, Starliner experienced propulsion issues.

What should have been an eight-day stint in space for them will now stretch for eight months. Both will be incorporated as regular crew members of Expedition 71/72 through February 2025 and will return with the agency’s Crew-9 mission. In the fallout, two astronauts who were originally assigned to Crew-9 — Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson — lost their ride to space to free up a pair of seats for Wilmore and Williams to come home.

“I’ll let y’all scratch your heads and see if you can figure out what’s going on.”

Getting Starliner through its testing phase has been a relentless battle for Boeing, though its representatives have not always been forthcoming on why the program has suffered so many setbacks. A string of issues has spanned a decade.

After the Space Shuttle retired in 2011, NASA hitched all of its rides on Russian rockets to the space station, costing the United States tens of millions of dollars per ride. Some considered it a national embarrassment.

NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX to build commercial spaceships to carry astronauts to and from the station in 2014. While SpaceX’s capsule went into service four years ago, Boeing’s Starliner has yet to obtain certification for regular flight operations.

NASA never intended to have all its eggs in Elon Musk‘s basket and says Starliner is still crucial to have as a backup. Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for space operations, hinted that the agency expects Starliner to fly again.

“We’ve learned a lot about the spacecraft during its journey to the station and its docked operations,” he said in a statement. “We also will continue to gather more data about Starliner during the uncrewed return and improve the system for future flights to the space station.”

This story has been updated from an earlier version to include a NASA statement explaining the nature of the pulsing sound within Starliner.