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Weird 'Outer-Space Type Music' Heard On Far Side Of Moon Released By NASA
Audio tapes from NASA reveal strange, musical sounds heard by Apollo 10 astronauts as they travelled around the far side of the moon in 1969.In case the return of The X-Files isn't enough to sate your love for conspiracies, an upcoming episode of the Science Channel series NASA's Unexplained Files reveals the mysterious sounds from the beyond that perplexed the astronauts. According to CBS, the transcript of the three onboard Apollo astronauts was released in 1973, but it wasn't until more recently that NASA unveiled the audio of their conversation and the otherworldly sounds that unsettled them decades ago.
The Apollo 10 crew heard music-like radio transmissions during the time they lost radio contact with Earth as they orbited the far side of the moon in May of 1969, just two months before Apollo 11's 1969 moon landing.
"That music even sounds outer-spacey, doesn't it?" asks Apollo 10 lunar module pilot Eugene Cernan in the audio recording and NASA's official transcript. "You hear that? That whistling sound?"
"Yes," mission commander Thomas Stafford confirmed.
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Command module pilot John Young then asks, "Did you hear that whistling sound, too?"
"Yes. Sounds like, you know, outer-space-type music," adds Cernan.
"I wonder what it is?" Young asked.
A few minutes later, Cernan added, "Boy, that sure is weird music."
"We're going to have to find out about that," Young said. "Nobody will believe us."
Whoa.
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Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden says on the upcoming episode of the Science Channel program, "The Apollo 10 crew was very used to the kind of noise that they should be hearing. Logic tells me that if there was something recorded on there, then there was something there. NASA would withhold information from the public if they thought it was in the public's best interest."
And while the recording and speculation are great fodder for conspiracy theories about what they actually heard out there, a NASA technician on the show explains the sounds away, saying that "radios in the two spacecraft [the lunar module and the command module] were interfering with each other." Sure, if you say so, buddy.
The NASA History Office also tweeted today that the transcript and recording were not classified, as some of have suspiciously suggested, but instead have been available for years:
#Apollo10 audio & transcripts were not classified, just no way to get them to the public before the internet. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/pEAyaDbklz
— NASA History Office (@NASAhistory) February 22, 2016
The new season of NASA's Unexplained Files premieres Tuesday night, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see if the truth is out there.
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