- President Donald Trump directs SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to 'go get' Starliner astronauts
- Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have been on International Space Station since June but NASA says the two are not stranded
- Ahead of Trump's directive, Williams and Wilmore were due to ride a SpaceX Dragon capsule back to Earth in March
President Donald Trump took to social media this week to announce he had directed SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to “go get” two NASA astronauts who have been on a protracted stay at the International Space Station after their Boeing Starliner mission, which launched in June and was expected to last about eight days, ran into multiple technical issues.
Veteran astronauts and Navy test pilots Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have been expected to return in March as part of a reconfigured SpaceX Crew 9 mission on a SpaceX Dragon space capsule docked at the International Space Station since late September. NASA was carrying live coverage of Williams and Wilmore on Thursday as they performed a maintenance-related spacewalk outside the station.
Trump laid the blame for the astronauts' extended stay on the space station on former President Joe Biden in his post to Truth Social, a platform operated by the Trump Media and Technology Group.
“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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Good luck Elon!!!”
Musk, who reportedly contributed some $250 million to Trump’s reelection effort and has become a member of the president’s inner circle following his appointment as co-chair of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, posted a response to Trump’s request on his own platform, X, formerly Twitter.
“The @POTUS has asked @SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the @Space_Station as soon as possible," Musk wrote. “We will do so.”
Are the astronauts stranded?
NASA has stated repeatedly that Williams and Wilmore are not “stranded” and noted that every mission to the International Space Station includes a contingency plan for longer stays.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson with NASA, which oversees SpaceX’s flights to the space station, said, “NASA and SpaceX are expeditiously working to safely return the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore as soon as practical, while also preparing for the launch of Crew-10 to complete a handover between expeditions,” per a report from Reuters. NASA has not indicated whether it can, or will, alter the current return plans.
A separate report from Reuters notes that returning Crew-9 to Earth before Crew-10’s arrival would mean NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who flew to the International Space Station with a Russian crew in September, would be the only American aboard the station, a rare staffing imbalance that NASA has said complicates maintenance of the station’s U.S. components.
Why are Williams and Wilmore still in space?
Problems with the debut crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule arose early on when five of 28 maneuvering thrusters failed to perform as expected during Starliner’s docking at the International Space Station on June 6. Engineers also identified five small helium leaks, some of which were detected before the spacecraft launched. Helium is used in the capsule’s thruster firing procedure.
Engineering teams spent months working to identify the underlying issues with the thrusters, critical for maneuvering and positioning the spacecraft, including reviewing massive amounts of data, conducting flight and ground testing, hosting independent reviews with agency propulsion experts and developing various return contingency plans, NASA reported last year.
But ultimately NASA decided that ongoing uncertainty and a lack of concurrence at the time among engineers and other experts about resolving the Starliner problems “does not meet the agency’s safety and performance requirements for human spaceflight, thus prompting NASA leadership to move the astronauts to the (SpaceX Dragon) Crew-9 mission.”
The Starliner capsule returned to Earth empty on Sept. 6 following a six-hour flight that did not encounter any issues.
Later that month, the SpaceX Crew 9 mission docked at the International Space Station, with only two astronauts aboard and plans to fill the remaining seats in the four-passenger capsule with Williams and Wilmore for a return flight scheduled, at the time, for February 2025.
On Dec. 17, NASA announced it was delaying the SpaceX Crew 10 mission launch and the expected crew handoff that would have marked the end of Williams’ and Wilmore’s time at the space station. NASA said the delay would push out the Crew 9-Crew 10 handoff to late March 2025.