Everyone thought the situation involving Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, the two NASA astronauts left on the International Space Station due to issues with Boeing’s spacecraft, was resolved. However, it recently took a surprising twist.
An incendiary message. On Tuesday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared on X, “The @POTUS has asked @SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the @Space_Station as soon as possible. We will do so. Terrible that the Biden administration left them there for so long.”
Within 20 minutes, over a million people viewed Musk’s post. The SpaceX CEO further fueled the controversy by replying “True” to a comment that said, “They hated you more than they wanted to rescue those astronauts. Awful.”
Trump’s confirmation. President Donald Trump intensified the narrative by posting on Truth Social, his own social media platform, that he had “asked Elon Musk and @SpaceX to “go get” the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration.” He added, “They have been waiting for many months on @Space Station. Elon will soon be on his way. Hopefully, all will be safe. Good luck, Elon!!!”
Context. In June 2024, astronauts Williams and Wilmore arrived at the ISS aboard the Starliner spacecraft, which is Boeing’s alternative to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
The spacecraft was supposed to spend a week in orbit before returning to Earth. However, a propulsion system failure during the outbound trip led to three months of testing, and it eventually returned empty.
Musk is lying. While it’s not surprising that Musk sometimes shares misleading information on his X account, his latest post misrepresents the situation in a particularly fanciful way.
Although astronauts Wilmore and Williams have been stranded in space since June, former President Joe Biden didn’t abandon them. SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission lifted off in September 2024, well before Trump took office, and it had two empty seats reserved to bring them back.
Why are they still on the ISS? This was NASA’s intended plan. Wilmore and Williams were reassigned to the Crew-9 mission, becoming part of the permanent crew. In fact, Williams is the commander of Expedition 72 and recently conducted a spacewalk as part of her duties.
NASA didn’t ask SpaceX to look for them immediately. This wasn’t because of animosity toward Musk but because a spare Crew Dragon wasn’t readily available. The most logical solution was to pull two astronauts off the next outbound flight (the Crew-9 mission) to free up those seats.
What’s next? The Crew-9 mission is scheduled to return at the end of March 2025. Wilmore and Williams are expected to return alongside their mission partners, American Nick Hague and Russian Aleksandr Gorbunov, in late March or early April, after Crew-10 has already arrived at the ISS. However, Musk and Trump’s recent statements suggest that Crew-9 could potentially be moved forward.
As for the Starliner, NASA recently canceled the flight it had contracted to Boeing for 2025. This year, the two astronaut rotations will be handled by SpaceX while Boeing continues to analyze the issues that occurred during its first manned flight and plans how to resolve them.
Image | NASA
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