Apollo 10 astronauts heard ‘eerie’ music on moon’s dark side

NASA recently declassified audio files that reveal Apollo 10 astronauts heard a mysterious music while their spacecraft passed around the far side of the moon in May 1969. The astronauts, who took part in a test for the first lunar landing, heard the eerie and odd sounds as they traveled farther from the Earth than ever before, about 220,820 nautical miles, and were out of contact with earth.

Tom Stafford, Eugene Cerman and Tom Stafford, the three Apollo 10 astronauts, can be clearly heard on recordings from the space flight discussing about the bizarre sound, as well as whether they should tell NASA about it, Discovery News reported.

In the recently declassified audio file, one astronaut is heard asking, "That music even sounds outer-spacey, doesn't it?" Lunar module pilot Eugene Cerman responds saying, "You hear that? That whistling sound?" "Boy, that sure is weird music." Responding to this, John Young, the command module lunar e pilot, says "We're going to have to find out about that."

The tapes were recorded while the three Apollo 10 astronauts were on the dark side of the moon, without any radio contact with earth in May 1969. Interestingly enough, the eerie whistling sound continued for almost an hour for which the astronauts were out of touch with earth.

Following the protocol, the recordings were returned to Mission Control for transcription. Later, they were archived and classified. Eventually, the audio tape and its transcription were revealed in 2008 and are still in the official website of NASA. 

An upcoming episode of the Science Channel series, "NASA's Unexplained Files" will uncover the mysterious and unexplained whistling sound heard by the Apollo astronauts. This episode of the show will focus on a bizarre event that was experienced by Apollo 10 crew, who flew to the moon, entered lunar orbit and even reached as close as 5,000 feet of the surface of the moon as a test for the famous flight of Apollo 11 just two months later.

"NASA's Unexplained Files" suggests that the sounds heard by the astronauts were so unusual that the crew discussed whether or not they should inform their superiors at NASA about the incident. The team feared that if they informed the matter to their superiors, it might cast doubts regarding their fitness for future spaceflight. 

In fact, NASA issued a statement this week saying that Cernan himself was doubtful about his claim. Cernan said, "I don't remember that incident exciting me enough to take it seriously. It was probably just radio interference."

Some scientists have suggested that some particles in space may possibly have got in the way of the astronauts' radios. Later, even the Cassini spacecraft picked up similar sounds from Saturn, however, in this case, the charged particles came from the Saturn's environment. Interestingly, the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere or any magnetic field. Perhaps, the sounds might have been a result of the two radios interfering with one another.

Watch the video on "Outer space music Part 1: Nasa's unexplained files" below:

Watch the video on "Outer space music Part 2: Nasa's unexplained files" below: