Trump Asks SpaceX to ‘Go Get’ Starliner Astronauts

Except…that was already the plan.

Trump in a post on his social media app, Truth Social, claimed the astronauts have been “virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration” and said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk would “soon be on his way.” Musk made his own social media post pinning blame on the Biden administration and promising to return the astronauts “as soon as possible.”

But NASA in August hatched a plan to bring Williams and Wilmore home in partnership with SpaceX, and the spacecraft that will do so is already at the ISS.

Starliner, which suffered helium leaks and degraded thrusters after arriving at the space station in June, returned to Earth uncrewed in September. Later that month, NASA launched Crew-9, its ninth Commercial Crew rotation mission to the ISS on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. The mission flew with two crewmembers, rather than four as intended, to free up seats for the Starliner astronauts on the way down. They are scheduled to return in late March, a slip from February after NASA delayed the launch of Crew-10.

“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,” NASA said in a statement viewed by FLYING.

The SpaceX Crew-8 Dragon that returned to Earth in September could not carry Williams and Wilmore because it was not compatible with their spacesuits. That left Crew-9 as the next best option.

But why not use a different vehicle? As NASA moved away from building its own crew rotation vehicles, it called on two companies—SpaceX and Boeing—to design alternatives. Wilmore and Williams’ mission was the first certification flight for Starliner, which still has a ways to go before it is cleared for service missions. That leaves SpaceX’s Dragon as the sole American-made vehicle capable of transporting crews to and from the ISS. The company has four Crew Dragon capsules and is building a fifth.

The alternative would be Russia’s Soyuz, which brought home NASA astronaut Frank Rubio in September after Rubio spent 371 days on orbit—a U.S. spaceflight record. But that particular spacecraft was sent as a replacement after the one that launched Rubio and his crewmates was hit by space junk.

NASA over the past few months has reiterated that Wilmore and Williams are not stranded and the decision to keep them on the ISS was based on a thorough assessment of risk. They could return on the docked SpaceX Dragon before March. But doing so would leave just one NASA astronaut—Don Pettit, who arrived on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in September—to maintain the space station’s U.S. orbital segment.

Williams and Wilmore, for their part, said they take no issue with their extended stay during an Earth-to-orbit call in July. They also voted in the 2024 U.S. presidential election and celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas from orbit. NASA has said the astronauts are in good health and regularly communicate with their loved ones.

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