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In a post on X on Tuesday evening, Elon Musk said President Trump had asked his rocket company SpaceX to bring home “as soon as possible” two NASA astronauts who have been on the International Space Station since June.SpaceX, in fact, is already scheduled to bring those two astronauts home, but no earlier than late March, along with two other astronauts who are currently on board.NASA has not responded to questions about whether it was indeed working to have those astronauts come home sooner, which could leave the space station understaffed.The White House did not respond to a request for comment.The astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, docked at the space station in June.
Their trip was not supposed to last much longer than a week or two in orbit as part of a test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.But because Starliner’s propulsion system malfunctioned during the trip there, NASA repeatedly extended the pair’s stay as engineers tried to figure out what had gone wrong.In his posting, Mr.
Musk added, “Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.”Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator during the Biden administration, did not respond to an email seeking comment.Lingering unease with the vehicle led NASA officials to decide that Starliner would return to Earth without Ms.Williams and Mr.
Wilmore, who remained in orbit as part of the space station crew.At that time, Mr.
Nelson said the foremost concern of NASA officials was the safety of Ms.Williams and Mr.
Wilmore.The Starliner landed without problems on Sept.7.Two extra astronauts in orbit led NASA and its international partners to juggle the next crew heading to the space station on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, a mission called Crew-9.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
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