President Donald Trump has turned his sights to the stars, looking to bring home the two Starliner astronauts who have been stuck on the International Space Station for the last seven months after their mission was supposed to last 10 days.
Trump posted on social media on Tuesday his thoughts on astronauts Suni Williams and Buch Wilmore, going so far as to say that the Biden administration was responsible for “abandoning” them.
In his Truth social post, Trump also asked SpaceX founder Elon Musk to “go get” the two “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!!!”
Musk confirmed in a post to his social media platform, X, that Trump had asked SpaceX to step in and get the Starliner astronauts, saying that “we will do so.”
“Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long,” Musk wrote.
But the remarks from Trump don’t paint the full picture of what’s going on with the astronauts, who, NASA has said, are not being abandoned in space.
The situation began June 5, when Wilmore and Williams embarked on an eight-to-10-day mission aboard the Boeing Starliner capsule. The mission was the first piloted flight of a Starliner capsule. After some concerns about propellant leaks and the propulsion system, NASA decided to return the capsule unmanned two months later and to keep the pair in space until they could return on a SpaceX Dragon capsule.
However, the decision on when to return Williams and Wilmore was solely decided by NASA, which had to balance any disruptions to the carefully scheduled crew rotations and cargo deliveries to the ISS.
Still, out of caution, a four-seat Crew Dragon capsule was launched to the space station on Sept. 28 with just two crew members, leaving spots for Williams and Wilmore to return when the current rotation ends.
The end of the rotation was at first expected to be in February but has now been delayed a month to allow SpaceX more time to launch the maiden flight of its new Crew Dragon capsule, Crew 10.
Once launched, the capsule will ferry the replacement crew for the ISS, and the pair of astronauts will return to Earth months after they departed.