Apollo crew heard ‘space tune’ on dark side of Moon

ASTRONAUTS heard a mysterious whistling sound while orbiting the far side of the Moon which they described as ‘weird music’, hidden NASA recordings have revealed.

The crew of Apollo 10, the fourth manned mission in the US space programme and a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the first Moon landing two months later in 1969, were out of radio contact with Earth.

But during the hour while they were passing round the far side of the moon, a recorder in their module taped their conversation as they talked about hearing the ‘outer spacey’ sounds. After they returned safely to Earth, their conversation was transcribed by

‘Well, that sure is weird music’

the space agency. But the transcripts were then consigned to the NASA archives without comment and classified.

At one point, the baffled Apollo 10 astronauts can be heard discussing whether they should tell NASA about the mysterious sounds or not. ‘The music even sounds outer-spacey, doesn’t it?’ asked one. Another commented: ‘You hear that? That whistling sound? Whooooooooo!’ ‘Well, that sure is weird music,’ his companion agreed.

Even after it was declassified, the transcript lay undiscovered in NASA’s archives until 2008. Now it has resurfaced in the upcoming third season of Science Channel’s series NASA’s Unexplained Files.

Planetary scientist Kevin Grazier said, while the Cassini spacecraft which reached Saturn in 2004 picked up similar broadcasts: ‘The Moon doesn’t have an atmosphere or magnetic field so you wouldn’t expect it to be making any broadcasts that could be picked up on a radio.’