posted 02-21-2016 08:38 AM               

The conversation between the three astronauts indicated they heard sounds like they had never heard before:

"It sounds like, you know, outer space-type music."

"You hear that? That whistling sound? Whooooooooo!"

"Well, that sure is weird music!"

posted 02-21-2016 02:55 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by David C:
Why the sudden fuss?

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The show's format is to take events from NASA's past that have unexpected hooks and play up the mysterious side of the story in order to engage the public. They then share what really happened by interviewing the history-makers, historians and authors — in this case Amy Shira Teitel, Andy Chaikin and Al Worden.

posted 02-21-2016 04:53 PM               

There are examples abound of these types of signals from the Sun, Jupiter (which is quite radio-noisy), Saturn, etc. Even Earth's magnetosphere produces a myriad of different sound types — a sample of such can be heard here from the Juno mission fly-by of Earth a few years ago.

On the other end of the spectrum in VLF frequencies, there are online receivers that can be listened to that receive what are called "spherics" - atmospheric noises. These are pops, whistles, and other sounds like bacon frying. These can be heard here.

posted 02-22-2016 09:30 AM               

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Originally posted by Dave_Johnson:
Those sounds were not VHF inter-radio interference, and I'm surprised that anyone would seriously suggest such.

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There is a strange noise in my headset now, an eerie woo-woo sound. Had I not been warned about it, it would have scared the hell out of me.

Stafford's Apollo 10 crew had first heard it, during their practice rendezvous around the moon. Alone on the back side, they were more than a little surprised to hear a noise that John Young in the command module and Stafford in the LM each denied making. They gingerly mentioned it in their debriefing sessions, but fortunately the radio technicians (rather than the UFO fans) had a ready explanation for it: it was interference between the LM's and command module's VHF radios.

We heard it yesterday when we turned our VHF radios on after separating the two vehicles, and Neil said that it "sounds like wind whipping around the trees." It stopped as soon as the LM got on the ground, and started up again just a short time ago. A strange noise in a strange place.

posted 02-22-2016 12:55 PM               

While listed as "confidential" in 1969 at the height of the Space Race, Apollo 10 mission transcripts and audio have been publicly available since 1973. Since the Internet did not exist in the Apollo era, NASA has only recently provided digital files for some of those earlier missions. The Apollo 10 audio clips were uploaded in 2012, but the mission's audio recordings have been available at the National Archives since the early 1970s.

As for the likely source of the sounds questioned in the television program, Apollo 10 Lunar Module Pilot Gene Cernan told NASA on Monday, "I don't remember that incident exciting me enough to take it seriously. It was probably just radio interference. Had we thought it was something other than that we would have briefed everyone after the flight. We never gave it another thought."