SpaceX CEO Elon Musk vowed on Tuesday to bring the two astronauts who remain stuck in space home ‘as soon as possible.’
The space company was given the responsibility in August to bring back Butch Wilmore, aged 62, and Sunita Williams, aged 59, to Earth in February as NASA officials determined that Boeing’s Starliner was not suitable for the task.
However, the replacements for Williams and Wilmore are not scheduled to reach the International Space Station until late March or early April. This means that the stranded astronauts will have to remain onboard until then to facilitate a smooth handover process.
In a post on X, though, Musk said he was tasked by President Donald Trump to immediately bring the stranded astronauts home.
He then hit out at former President Joe Biden for not acting sooner.
‘Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long,’ he lamented.
Trump later confirmed that he made the request.
On his Truth Social platform, he posted, ‘I have requested Elon Musk and SpaceX to bring back the two courageous astronauts who have essentially been left behind by the Biden administration.’
Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have been stuck at the International Space Station since June 5. They are pictured giving a news conference in July
Elon Musk claimed on Tuesday that President Donald Trump asked SpaceX to bring the astronauts home as soon as possible
‘They have been waiting many months on [the] Space Station,’ he continued.
‘Elon will soon be on his way. Hopefully, all will be safe,’ the president said.
‘Good luck Elon!!!’
Wilmore and Williams first landed at the International Space Station on June 5, and have been left stranded there ever since.
The pair’s visit was originally only supposed to last eight days, but due to safety concerns, NASA decided to send the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they arrived in back to Earth without anyone inside.
Earlier this month, Wilmore and Williams were heard telling NASA bigwigs ‘eventually, we want to go home.’
Williams also told students at the Massachusetts high school she graduated from that she is now ‘trying to remember what it’s like to walk,’ CBS News reports.
‘I’ve been up here long enough right now, I’ve been trying to remember what it’s like to walk,’ she recently told students at Needham High School. ‘I haven’t walked. I haven’t sat down. I haven’t laid down.
‘You don’t have to, you can just close your eyes and float where you are right here.’
The astronaut also told the students the delay in coming home was ‘a little bit of a shock.
Musk hit out at former President Joe Biden for not acting sooner
Commentator Ian Miles Cheong then replied that the Biden administration ‘hated you more than they wanted to rescue those astronauts,’ which Musk said was ‘True’
‘We knew that it would be probably a month or so, honestly,’ she said of her and Wilmore’s voyage.
‘But the extended stay was a little bit different.’
The pair had been doomed by a cascade of vexing thruster failures and helium leaks in the Boeing capsule, which marred their trip to the space station.
They ended up in a holding pattern as engineers conducted tests and debated what to do about the trip back.
Ultimately, NASA decided that it was too risky to bring Williams and Wilmore back to Earth on Boeing’s capsule – and said they would instead arrive back on a SpaceX spacecraft.
‘This has not been an easy decision, but it is absolutely the right one,’ Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator, said at the time.
But the Crew-10 mission that was set to fly up to the International Space Station to retrieve Williams and Wilmore has been delayed by at least a month because SpaceX’s new fifth Crew Dragon spacecraft was not yet operational, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
That mission is not slated to begin until late March or early April, meaning Williams and Wilmore will have to stay several more months before they can return to Earth.
Williams and Wilmore had been doomed by a cascade of vexing thruster failures and helium leaks in the Boeing capsule, which marred their trip to the space station
The decision to use SpaceX to retrieve the astronauts was a blow to Boeing, adding to the safety concerns plaguing the company on its airplane side.
Boeing had counted on Starliner’s first crew trip to revive the troubled program after years of delays and ballooning costs.
The company had insisted Starliner was safe based on all the recent thruster tests both in space and on the ground.
Williams and Wilmore also initially said they had trust in the thruster testing being conducted. They had no complaints, they added, and enjoyed pitching in with space station work.
Williams told a group of students this month she is ‘trying to remember what it’s like to walk’
Yet Starliner’s woes began long before Williams and Wilmore took it up to the space station.
Bad software fouled the first test flight without a crew in 2019, prompting a do-over in 2022.
Then parachute and other issues cropped up, including a helium leak in the capsule’s propellant system that nixed a launch attempt in May. The leak eventually was deemed to be isolated and small enough to pose no concern. But more leaks sprouted following liftoff, and five thrusters also failed.
All but one of those small thrusters restarted in flight. But engineers remain perplexed as to why some thruster seals appear to swell, obstructing the propellant lines, then revert to their normal size.
These 28 thrusters are vital.
Besides needed for space station rendezvous, they keep the capsule pointed in the right direction at flight’s end as bigger engines steer the craft out of orbit. Coming in crooked could result in catastrophe.
Still, NASA isn’t giving up on Boeing, with Administrator Bill Nelson saying he is ‘100%’ certain that Starliner will fly again.
