President Donald Trump has made a commitment to personally assist NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore after their challenging nine-month space mission.
At a press briefing on Friday, Trump addressed concerns about the astronauts not receiving overtime pay. He stated that he had not been informed about this issue before and assured, “Nobody’s ever mentioned this to me. If I have to, I’ll pay it out of my own pocket. I’ll take care of it.”
Williams and Wilmore originally planned to spend only eight days on the International Space Station (ISS) after their launch aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule on June 5.
But Starliner suffered numerous technical issues that ultimately delayed their return until March 18.
By the time the pair splashed down inside a SpaceX Dragon capsule, they had logged 286 days in space.
Wilmore’s daughter Daryn, 19, had said her father would receive a meagre $5 extra per day he was in space as compensation, which works out to around $1,380.
The payout will be tacked onto the astronauts’ annual salaries, which fall somewhere between $125,133 and $162,672 per year.
Former NASA astronaut Cady Coleman recently revealed astronauts only receive their basic salary without overtime benefits for ‘incidentals’ – a small amount they are ‘legally obligated to pay you’.
‘For me it was around $4 a day,’ Coleman told the Washingtonian. Coleman received approximately $636 in incidental pay for her 159-day mission between 2010 and 2011.
The nine-month-long Starliner saga entered the political spotlight in January, when Trump said he told SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk to ‘go get’ the two ‘brave’ astronauts who had been ‘virtually abandoned’ by the Biden administration.
Musk then reiterated Trump’s claim in a post on X, but these statements were met with confusion as SpaceX had already been tasked with bringing Williams and Wilmore home since August.
In February, Musk and Trump appeared in a joint interview on Fox News, during which the tech billionaire blamed NASA’s choice to extend the Starliner mission on ‘political reasons,’ and the president added that Biden was going to ‘leave them in space.’
Musk doubled down on these claims during an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast later that month, alleging the Biden administration declined his offer to bring the stranded astronauts home sooner because it would have made Trump ‘look good.
He told Rogan that the Biden administration did not want to jeopardize Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and intentionally ‘pushed the return date past the inauguration date.’
NASA has not directly addressed these claims, but Trump’s directive to Musk in January did appear to shift the timing of the Starliner crew’s return.
‘Per President Trump’s direction, NASA and SpaceX worked diligently to pull the schedule a month earlier,’ NASA acting Administrator Janet Petro said following the Tuesday splashdown.
‘This international crew and our teams on the ground embraced the Trump Administration’s challenge of an updated, and somewhat unique, mission plan, to bring our crew home.’
Williams and Wilmore splashed down off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida at 5:57 pm on Tuesday.
Despite the challenges of prolonged spaceflight – including muscle and bone loss, vision issues, and balance readjustment – experts say their nine-month stay is manageable in terms of health risks.
Steve Stich, manager, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said at a news conference: ‘The crew’s doing great.’
The returning astronauts were then loaded onto stretchers, which is standard practice for astronauts returning from space after being weakened by their time in microgravity.
Following their initial health checks, Williams and Wilmore were flown to their crew quarters at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for several more days of routine health checks.
On Wednesday, NASA shared photos of the pair already making a surprising recovery as they were walking under their own power in normal gravity.
But Williams looked noticeably frail and both astronauts still had IV drips in her arms from receiving fluids.
The duo will need extensive physical therapy to recondition their muscles and bones, and it take months for them to return to their pre-flight health status, doctors have told DailyMail.com.
Based on the length of their mission, ‘it will likely take at least three to six months for them to feel fully normal again, and probably longer for their spine to return to pre-flight condition,’ Dr Ehsan Jazini, a spine surgeon at VSI, told DailyMail.com.
Research has shown that roughly a third of astronauts who spend six months in space go on to suffer chronic back pain, and nearly half experience acute pain after returning to Earth.
That’s because low gravity causes deterioration, straightening and lengthening of the spine, as well as weakening of the abdominal and back muscles that support it.
This, along with damage to the rest of their musculoskeletal system, can leave astronauts significantly debilitated after long-term ISS missions.
Dr Jazini said their rehab program will likely include progressive core and spinal stabilization exercises, stretching and mobility work, slow reintroduction to high-impact activities and monitoring for signs of herniation or chronic pain issues.
‘NASA’s medical teams are well-equipped to handle this, but given the length of their mission, a longer recovery timeline should be expected,’ he said.
‘Just like I tell my patients, they’ll need a lot of patience and consistency in the rehabilitation process.’
