In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream

On October 15, 2003, at precisely 09:00 (UTC+08:00), Astronaut Yang Liwei, a 38-year-old lieutenant colonel in the People's Liberation Army sat inside the Shenzhou spacecraft perched on top of the Long March 2F launch vehicle as it ignited its engines and rocketed away from Jiuquan LA-4/SLS-1 Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert. After a successful departure from our atmosphere, the Shenzhou spacecraft entered orbit 213 miles above Earth at 09:10 (UTC+08:00), making Astronaut Yang Liwei China's very first man in space.

What must have been a proud moment for the Chinese astronaut as his spacecraft quietly made its way across the heavens through the cold dark of space. The serenity was suddenly shattered as the Chinese astronaut was startled by a loud banging noise coming from outside the capsule.

BOOM…BOOM…BOOM...

Travelling at thousands of miles per hour in temperatures so cold (minus 454.81 degrees Fahrenheit), the point at which molecular motion actually stops…something or someone was banging on the hull of his spacecraft…Yang, the sole occupant of the capsule, was shaken by sounds that pierced the quiet of space as he cautiously moved toward the spaceship’s porthole to investigate. Nervously peering into the dark of space, the Chinese Astronaut could not see anything or anyone.

“It neither came from outside nor inside the spaceship, but sounded like someone was knocking the body of the spaceship just as knocking an iron bucket with a wooden hammer.”

Anyone with a working knowledge of science understands that for sound to travel, it requires a medium - be it air particles, water molecules or metal. For the sound to resonate throughout his small spacecraft as it travelled through space, it would have to be something physically 'hitting' the spacecraft.

Astronaut Yang Liwei tried to ignore his noisy neighbour and focus on the mission at hand, and as the Shenzhou spacecraft completed 14 orbits and reentered our Earth's atmosphere at 06:04 (UTC+08:00) (22:04 UTC). Its parachute deployed normally, and the Shenzhou spacecraft along with its Chinese Astronaut occupant successfully returned to our Earth at 06:28 (UTC+08:00), touching down only 3.0 miles from the planned landing site in Inner Mongolia.

Approximately 15 minutes after his return to Earth, Astronaut Yang Liwei, former fighter pilot and now China's first man in space, triumphantly emerged from his capsule and happily waved to members of the Chinese recovery team as the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center declared China's first crewed spacecraft mission a complete success.

Post-mission investigations tried to explain the mysterious sounds of banging on the spacecraft but no absolute answers were brought forth. Was it due to pressure changes or thermal variations? Was it a design flaw or structural anomaly that produced these unprecedented mysterious sounds occurring in the dead of space, or was it a Xenomorph attempting to gain access to a free human dinner? 

We cannot be certain about what transpired in orbit that day, and we did not say it was aliens...but it was aliens. 

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