Sunita Williams ‘stuck’ in space: International Space Station (ISS)’s former commander Chris Hadfield has warned, “several noises I’d prefer not to hear inside my spaceship”, after “strange noises” were detected inside Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore’s Starliner spacecraft.
NASA had earlier issued a clarification and confirmed that the issue stemmed from an audio configuration problem between the spacecraft and the space station.
Chris Hadfield, the commander of the ISS in 2013, took to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) and wrote, “There are several noises I’d prefer not to hear inside my spaceship, including this one that @Boeing Starliner is now making.”
The unsettling sounds, which went viral on social media, drew concern from space enthusiasts, including former astronaut Chris Hadfield.
Taking to microblogging platform X (formerly known as Twitter), NASA Commercial Crew had said,” A pulsing sound from a speaker in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft heard by NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore aboard the International Space Station has stopped. The feedback from the speaker was the result of an audio configuration between the space station and Starliner.”
Despite NASA’s explanation—that the noise was due to the complex audio system used to connect various spacecraft and modules—social media continued to buzz with theories and fears. Some users compared the sounds to a “horror show,” while others scrutinized Hadfield’s comments given his extensive space experience.
NASA later clarified that the “pulsing sound” had ceased, but that did little to quell the growing speculation online.
One X user remarked, “You saying this hits a lot differently than nearly anyone else saying this,” while another suggested, “That is some Stanley Kubrick level horror show right there.”
On Saturday morning, Wilmore reported the strange noise to Mission Control, which described the sound as a “pulsating noise, almost like a sonar ping.” The spacecraft, which had transported Wilmore and Williams to the ISS in June for an eight-day mission, was later deemed too risky to return to Earth with the astronauts aboard, as announced by NASA on August 24.