Readers like you keep news free for everyone.
More than 5,000 readers have already pitched in to keep free access to The Journal.
For the price of one cup of coffee each week you can help keep paywalls away.
# dark side of the moon
Nasa releases 'outer-space music' recorded on moon mission in 1969
The sounds were recorded as Apollo 10 flew around the far side of the moon.
NASA HAS RELEASED a recording of astronauts on Apollo 10 who heard what sounded like “outer-space type music”.
Transcripts of the conversation, which took place in 1969, were made public in 2008, but this is the first time audio has been released.
The unusual sounds – which you can listen to here or in the below video – were recorded as the spacecraft flew around the far side of the moon.
Upon hearing the noises, astronauts Eugene Cernan and John Young describe them as “outer-spacey”.
A full transcript of the conversation can be read here.
A Nasa technician who appears on a Science Channel programme about the incident says radio interference is the most likely cause of the sounds.
Nasa said reports the audio is “newly declassified” are incorrect.
While listed as confidential in 1969 at the height of the space race, Apollo 10 mission transcripts and audio have been publicly available since 1973. Since the internet did not exist in the Apollo era, we have only recently provided digital files for some of those earlier missions.
“The Apollo 10 audio clips were uploaded in 2012, but the mission’s audio recordings have been available at the National Archives since the early 1970s.”
