FlickrPreviously classified tapes have revealed that Apollo astronauts heard strange music on the dark side of the moon.
In 1966, two months before the first manned mission to the moon, the crew of the Apollo 10 mission were excited to be taking part in the ‘dress rehearsal’ for the moon landings, the Huffington Post reports.
Their mission was to test the equipment that would be used for the landing and would involve travelling to the far side of the moon where all spacecraft are out of radio contact with Earth for about an hour.
However the astronauts were shocked when, despite being out of radio contact, they heard strange music-like radio transmissions coming through their headsets. They were apparently so surprised that they didn’t know whether or not to report it to NASA, it’s been revealed.
The taped recordings, which were classified for four decades, contained ‘strange, otherworldly music coming through the Apollo module’s radio’ according to the upcoming Science Channel series, NASA’s Unexplained Files.
The conversation between the three astronauts indicated they heard sounds like they had never heard before.
Describing the noise, they said:
It sounds like, you know, outer space-type music.
You hear that? That whistling sound? Whooooooooo!
Well, that sure is weird music!
The unexplained “music” transmission lasted almost an hour, and just before the astronauts regained radio contact with Earth they discussed whether or not to tell Mission Control what they had experienced.
Apollo 10 crew - WikimediaThese transcripts of the Apollo 10 mission were classified and untouched in NASA’s archives until 2008, and have sparked an ongoing debate as to the nature and origin of the strange sounds heard by the astronauts.
Apollo 15 astronaut Al Worden says on 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.
Wikimedia
However there may be an explanation, NASA engineers claim that the sound was simple radio feedback. Although Worden doesn’t agree with this.
He said:
We’d had a lot of incidents where guys who flew in space saw and heard things that they didn’t recognize, and you wonder about all of that. I have a very open mind about what could’ve happened. It’s somebody’s hearsay evidence — it’s only a visual or audio event, which is hard to pin down. Recollection is one thing, but actual proof is something entirely different.
So who knows is this just simple radio feedback or could it have been an alien version of Radio 1?
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.