A Chinese Astronaut Heard A Sound In Space

[+thexfile Subscriber²]

It was October 2003 and a historical moment for China. The country launched its first manned spacecraft carrying astronaut Yang Liwei, and his flight was scheduled to be 21 hours long. During his flight, however, he heard a knocking sound. He described the sound like a wooden mallet hitting a metal surface. The sound occurred on and off. He could not identify the source of it, though reported that it sounded like something was knocking on the outside of the ship.

Adding to the mystery, this was not the last time the sound was heard. Astronauts on Shenzhou 6 in 2005 and Shenzhou 7 in 2008 also reported hearing the exact same sound and were equally unable to identify the cause. Though not exactly the same sound, during the Apollo 10 mission in 1969, astronauts reported hearing eerie whistling while they were on the dark side of the moon; the whistling was even recorded by the ship's systems. Most recently, the astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, famously trapped in space after the fiasco with their Boeing Starliner spacecraft, heard a strange pulsing noise from the ship.

In many of those cases, scientists could find a source for the strange sounds. The Boeing Starliner noise was explained as audio feedback from the Starliner and the International Space Station. The Apollo 10 noise was explained as radio interference between the lunar module and the command module. However, the knocking sounds heard on the three Shenzhou missions have still eluded explanation.

https://www.bgr.com/1977131/chinese-astronaut-impossible-sound-space-two-decades-explained/

 

[FloatingFatMan]

It's probably just the sound of metal expanding/contracting tiny amounts as they move in and out of sunlight.

 

[+thexfile Subscriber²]

It could be a micrometeorite hitting the capsule.

[FloatingFatMan]

On 29/09/2025 at 15:49, thexfile said:

It could be a micrometeorite hitting the capsule.

That wouldn't be a continuous sound, though.

[neufuse Veteran]

This has been reported many times before and every time it's been found to be expansion or a minor leak