In a post on X on Tuesday evening, Elon Musk said President Donald Trump had asked his rocket company SpaceX to bring home “as soon as possible” two Nasa astronauts who have been on the International Space Station since June.
SpaceX, in fact, is already scheduled to bring those two astronauts home, but no earlier than late March, along with two other astronauts who are currently on board. Nasa has not responded to questions about whether it was indeed working to have those astronauts come home sooner, which could leave the space station understaffed.
Hours later, Trump in his own post on the website Truth Social, confirmed the request, stating that “Elon will soon be on his way,” without setting a time frame for a return trip.
The astronauts, Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, docked at the space station in June. Their trip was not supposed to last much longer than a week or two in orbit as part of a test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. But because Starliner’s propulsion system malfunctioned during the trip there, Nasa repeatedly extended the pair’s stay as engineers tried to figure out what had gone wrong.
In his posting, Musk added, “Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.”
In his Truth Social post, Trump echoed that sentiment, claiming that Williams and Wilmore had been “virtually abandoned in space by the Biden administration. .In fact, the space station has been re-supplied four times since the two arrived.
Bill Nelson, the Nasa administrator during the Biden administration, did not respond to an email seeking comment. Lingering unease with the vehicle led Nasa officials to decide that Starliner would return to Earth without Williams and Wilmore, who remained in orbit as part of the space station crew. At that time, Nelson said the foremost concern of Nasa officials was the safety of Williams and Wilmore.
Two extra astronauts in orbit led Nasa and its international partners to juggle the next crew heading to the space station on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, a mission called Crew-9.
Astronauts generally spend about half a year on the space station before returning on the same spacecraft they flew on to get there. But because Williams and Wilmore no longer had a ride home, two of the four astronauts originally assigned for Crew-9 were left on the ground when the mission launched on September 28. That left two seats for Williams and Wilmore for the return trip, which was then expected in February.
Before astronauts return, Nasa prefers that their replacements arrive first to avoid periods of understaffing, which hampers scientific research on the space station and potentially leaves the smaller crew overwhelmed in case of an emergency.
If something on the Nasa side of the outpost broke and required a spacewalk to repair, there would just be one Nasa astronaut aboard — Don Pettit — to perform the task. That would be dangerous, as spacewalks are usually conducted in pairs.
New York Times News Service