Music on the Moon?

In the audio recordings from the Apollo 10 mission (which you can hear in this video from Space.com), astronaut Gene Cernan(who was piloting the lunar module) asks John Young (who was piloting the command module) if he hears "that whistling sound?" It is Cernan who calls it "music" and says it "even sounds outer-spacey." Later, the two men ask Tom Stafford (who is in the lunar module with Cernan) if he hears it, too. They agree that it's "really weird," and Young says, "We're going to have to find out about that. Nobody will believe us." [Lunar Legacy: 45 Apollo Moon Mission Photos]

Apollo 10, launched in May of 1969, paved the way for Apollo 11, launched in July of that same year, to put two humans on the lunar surface. The Apollo 10 astronauts flew to the moon in a command module, and two of the crewmembers also took a ride in the lunar module, dropping down to less than ten miles above the moon's surface. The whistling sound, it turned out, was nothing more than interference between the VHF radios on the two different vehicles.


Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins wrote in his book, "Carrying the Fire," that NASA technicians warned him about the whistling. Multiple publications have pulled the key passage from the book, in which Collins even says, "Had I not been warned about it, it would have scared the hell out of me." Collins' book was published in 1974.

- See more at: http://www.space.com/32007-alien-moon-music-apollo-10-explained.html#sthash.jkDAIcrp.dpuf

NASA’s “Flying Saucer” Successfully Passes Flight Test -technobuffalo

"High over the Pacific Ocean on Saturday, NASA’s LDSD “flying saucer” spacecraft traveled at almost four times the speed of sound as it raced upwards toward the heavens. At approximately 180,000 feet, NASA successfully performed the craft’s first crucial test imperative for a possible future Mars mission. But not everything went according to plan.

After deploying the craft’s doughnut-shaped inflatable device, dubbed Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD), NASA was able to slow the saucer’s descent to a more manageable 2.5x the speed of sound. But upon deploying the LDSD’s giant parachute—the second and most crucial part of NASA’s test launch—the chute became tangled, and the spacecraft eventually splashed down into the Pacific Ocean. It was supposed to land gently.

If there was payload on that craft—or worse, humans—the mission would have been an unmitigated disaster. But luckily this was just a test, and NASA can use that data to improve upon the LDSD’s systems. The agency is using a parachute system that dates back to the 1970s, but with heavier payloads and a larger overall chute—about 36 meters in diameter.

Stating the obvious, Dan Coatta, one of the mission specialists, said it appeared as though the chute didn’t “deploy that well.” NASA tested the LDSD technology at extremely high altitudes because they’re most similar to the upper atmosphere of Mars."

-Read more here:

NASA’s “Flying Saucer” Flight Test