Apollo 10 Astronauts Heard a 'Weird Music' On Far Side of the Moon — And No, It's Not Aliens

NASA, the leading space organization in the world, is privy to information that may or may not be released considering what’s best for the public interest. In their triumphant mission to touchdown on the surface of the moon in 1969, the Apollo 10 astronauts picked up eerie sounds from outer space months before as their spacecraft traveled around the Moon. The noise and accompanying conversations between the astronauts remained hidden in archival files for decades until NASA decided to release them decades later, for good reason. It was revealed in a documentary as part of the new season of NASA’s Unexplained Files that aired on the Science channel (@sciencechannel).

Soon after the Apollo 10 spacecraft entered the lunar orbit, it eventually traveled to the far side of the moon where any contact with Earth is not possible. All radio contact, by this point, were terminated, hence, leaving the astronauts on their own. Apollo 15 Commander Module Pilot, Al Worden said in the documentary, “It’s about an hour on the backside of the Moon away from Earth where you lose radio contact.” The astronauts aboard the Apollo 10 were Thomas Stafford, John Young, and Eugene Cernan. Scientists in the control room waited for the astronauts to emerge from the no-signal zone and around the far side, which they did, unharmed.

But little did they know of the irregular happenings that went down in between. It was not until 2008 that the recordings of unsettling “music” and astronauts discussing it emerged hinting at the unexplained incident. The otherworldy music emitted from space, heard as “Woo-woo,” unnerved the astronauts. Their conversations addressing the chilling sound were explicit in the tapes. “The music even sounds outer-spacey, doesn’t it? You hear that? That whistling sound,” an astronaut could be heard saying. It appeared to them similar to outer space-type music and was rather strange to hear it near the moon’s horizons. 

Worden explained that while there is no radio signal, recorders do collect all data from the far side and it is later wired to the control room for observation. Following Apollo 10’s return to Earth, all the recordings and data were transcribed into papers and stored in the archives in classified form. A second part of the docu-series revealed that the astronauts heard the music for over an hour and continuously talked about it, trying to decipher the reason behind it. They were unsure whether to report the eerie sounds considering the chiefs would not take them seriously. It would jeopardize their chances in future missions. 

Therefore, the noise remained unexplained until another probe, the Cassini spacecraft, was sent to Saturn and caught similar broadcasts and a possible clue. Speculation about it being alien speech was soon debunked with a scientific explanation for the phenomenon. “These are caused by charged particles moving through Saturn’s magnetic environment,” said Kevin Grazier, a planetary scientist. However, there still seemed to be an oddity– the moon did not have any magnetic field.

In that case, NASA’s radio technicians theorized that it may have been caused due to the interference of VHF radio signals coming from two different spacecraft, the LM and the Command Module. Despite the possible explanation, Worden remained unconvinced about the source of the outer space noise. “I just think we don’t understand it,” the former astronaut suggested. He added that the Apollo 10 astronauts were trained for the kinds of noise they might hear in space and this noise was barely anything like it.

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