Trump Asks SpaceX to Return NASA’s ‘Stranded’ Astronauts to Earth ASAP

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Trump Asks SpaceX to Return NASA’s ‘Stranded’ Astronauts to Earth ASAP

Regardless of a latest request from Trump, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have been already scheduled to return to Earth on a Crew Dragon capsule this spring

NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore on the Worldwide Area Station.

Nasa/Imago/Alamy Inventory Photograph

Nicely, that is one thing of a head-scratcher.

On Tuesday night (Jan. 28), President Donald Trump introduced that he has one other activity for SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, who’s already main a cost- and regulation-cutting effort referred to as the Division of Governmental Effectivity.

“I have just asked Elon Musk and @SpaceX to ‘go get’ the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration. 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!!!” Trump wrote in a publish on his Reality Social platform. The message was additionally printed on X, the social media website that Musk owns.


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Presumably, Trump means NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who’ve been dwelling on the orbiting lab since June 2024.

They arrived on the primary crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which was imagined to final simply 10 days or so. Nonetheless, Starliner suffered points with its thrusters, and NASA prolonged Williams’ and Wilmore’s orbital keep whereas it and Boeing studied the issue.

In August, the company determined to not threat placing the duo on Starliner for the journey house. The capsule would return to Earth uncrewed (which it did with out incident in September), and Wilmore and Williams would come house in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule — the automobile flying the corporate’s Crew-9 mission, which launched to the ISS on Sept. 28.

This choice compelled some crew shuffling; NASA needed to take two astronauts off the initially four-person Crew-9 launch to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the downward leg. (Each Starliner astronauts are in good well being on the ISS, and there are many provides to assist them by the top of their keep, NASA officers have mentioned.)

Trump did not point out this present homecoming plan in his publish. And neither did Musk, who referenced the president’s request earlier than it was printed 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 so long,” Musk wrote in an X publish on Tuesday afternoon.

It is unclear what “as soon as possible” means on this context. Crew-9 had initially been slated to come back house in late February, however that timeline has been pushed again no less than a month in order that SpaceX can full work to prepared the Crew Dragon that can fly the four-person Crew-10 mission to the ISS. The Crew-10 Dragon is a brand-new (quite than flight-proven) automobile, and the corporate needs a bit extra time to examine all the pieces out.

Does Musk imply to indicate that SpaceX will work to deliver Crew-9 house earlier than Crew-10 is able to launch? NASA in all probability wouldn’t be too proud of that plan, as Ars Technica’s Eric Berger famous. It could depart Don Pettit as the one NASA astronaut aboard the ISS for a stretch; he’d must carry out plenty of science and operations work by himself till reinforcements arrived.

Or might SpaceX swap Crew-10’s Dragon, swapping it out for a flight-proven one to allow an earlier launch? In any case, the corporate has 4 Crew Dragons which have carried astronauts to and from orbit earlier than — Endeavour, Endurance, Freedom and Resilience. (Freedom is flying the Crew-9 mission and is due to this fact already on the ISS.)

It is also attainable that Trump and Musk, who has apparently grow to be fairly shut with the president, are primarily enjoying politics with the scenario. Each blamed the Biden administration for Williams’ and Wilmore’s prolonged ISS keep, in any case.

Or perhaps they’re merely trolling, one thing that each males — maybe the 2 strongest folks on the earth — very a lot love to do.

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