Mystery solved in music heard from NASA's Apollo 10 mission

Strange music was heard by the crew of Apollo 10 during their 1969 mission. Now, NASA has revealed that it was interference between radios that caused the sound. CBS News space consultant Bill Harwood joins CBSN with the details.

[fredkitchen]

Thank god that mystery that I've never even thought about until now has been solved

[sustayne]

The mystery has not been solved at all. The VHF heterodyning/ interference idea was a theory at best., There would be no need to classify this if true. Further, all of the astronauts on this mission were extremely familiar with what this interference sounds like. They are clearly referring to a sound which is musical in nature which stopped as soon as they reestablished radio contact with earth. To confuse further, many videos published of late embellish the original recording by dropping in a recording made by the cassini probe of Saturn, yet the fact that this had been done is not made known to viewers. This is disinformation. Effective disinformation.


If people can conceal the truth without any loss of sanity, people can so take the same truth and expect the same retention of sanity.

[angeldominguez]

This explanation was not accepted by the astronauts. They mentioned they were very accustomed to the sounds that these sounds could of produced, and that these sounds were not similar.

[thegamingtheater]

they're trying to say that buzzing in the audio is the interference when that buzzing isn't even what the astronauts were hearing

[letropchiant]

So, they recorded 1 hour of interference?

[sayittomyfaceidareyou]

It lasted an hour. So if it was interference why it only lasted an hour? It should always been there if it was interference. Interference doesn't decide I'm just gonna make interference noise an hour and not longer.

[johnathanbrusher]

Always the "logical" explanation from Never A Straight Answer (NASA)

[hipgnosis]

Yes because astronauts can't tell the difderence. They also mentioned having a visitor outside in the transcripts.

[AALavdas]

They DID have video back then. This is indeed film, because it is obvious by its appearance to someone with a little bit of experience in these things - and also because they would not carry bulky open reel video tape recorders to the moon...

[DaveMiller]

This is a theory. They do not KNOW what it is at all.

[kennydunk]

Sounds like not all systems were grounded properly

[ApolloWasReal]

The "music" was actually an artifact of the backup VHF ranging system being tested at the time. It used the same radios over which the astronauts were talking.

[VXNCE]

There's another sound too it was music too

[jimoberg]

Harwood is the gold standard for spaceflight facts and insights, he's the best network space consultant still at work. Another great commentary.

[jaimehudson]

Theory on Apollo 10 space music sounds like pure bullonium to my ears!

[ankurpatel]

It's not interference, if you done sound engineering

[loosejenkins]

Sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum so how could it be anything external? Surely it has to have originated within the ship or its electronics?

[marcianocastillo]

Planets sound like that it's not a mystery

[syntrilliumc.e.p.]

Try finding the 1min 14sec video here on the tube having this title:
Cassini RPWS: The Eerie Sounds of Saturn's Radio Emissions
Interestingly then those frequencies which the Cassini space craft picked up in November 2003 which then was converted and compressed to hearable audio, sounds actually the same as what the Apollo 10 picked up behind the Moon 33 years earlier.

[jonsommet]

This is literally not a mystery. They had interreference and realized it?