HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Hearing a strange noise? If you live close to Redstone Arsenal, that is a likely occurrence, but what do these strange noises actually mean?
"So, Redstone Arsenal does a lot of research development testing here on the arsenal," Martin Traylor, Deputy to the Garrison shares. "Obviously, that's what the arsenal exists to do on multiple fronts from multiple agencies, from the FBI, the ATF to NASA and different agencies. So, a lot of that involves conducting operations that make a lot of noise in the region."
Redstone Arsenal is getting out the word on how to complain or inquire about the noise heard on the arsenal. "There's a lot going on with the arsenal," Traylor shares. "It's just to be expected and I know it's disturbing, but it's actually good for the economy. It shows the growth of the arsenal and grows to the region."
Before you file that complaint, let’s understand what we are hearing. "They'll hear explosions that we're doing testing of demolitions in different types of missiles and things that the arsenal has been known historically for doing for the last seven years," Traylor shares. "Then there's also the test fire engines of new origin, rocket engines and things that are going on here right now that NASA doing and in support of going back to the moon."
So, when are these tests usually done? "They're typically going to hear them between Mondays and Fridays, and they increase throughout the day" Traylor shares. "Most likely it's going to be in towards the evening hours. If you're hearing something around dinnertime, typically it's going to be a test engine result or a test of some type like that with NASA, the explosions occur typically during the day and typically there's a series of them. It's like a train as people get used to the trains going by and they get used to the demo noise."
To file a complaint? "So, they can contact our public affairs office for any information about the noise. The public affairs office typically will put out on our Facebook at their social media, what the planned noise times are going to be and when we're going to have planned experiments and different things going on," Traylor explains. "That's also where people go to report anything that seems unusual to them and then if there's any damage by any chance, and they would report to the installation legal office and file their complaints that way."