NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) since June 2024, may soon return to Earth. Elon Musk has revealed that US President Donald Trump has asked his SpaceX to bring the two astronauts back as soon as possible.
"The POTUS has asked SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the Space Station as soon as possible. We will do so," Musk said on X.
The SpaceX CEO also accused the previous administration of abandoning them.
"Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long," Musk added.
Williams and Wilmore went for what was originally a week-long test flight of the Boeing Starliner capsule's first crewed flight to the ISS. However, due to technical issues faced by the Starliner, their return was initially delayed, and as Boeing failed to fix the issues, NASA decided to bring the capsule back to Earth empty, leaving Williams and Wilmore stranded on the ISS.
NASA then tasked Musk's SpaceX with bringing the two astronauts back to Earth safely. As per the new timeline, Williams and Wilmore were scheduled to return on SpaceX's Crew-9, which was launched in September. They were set to return home in February 2025, but in December, efforts to bring them back suffered yet another delay after SpaceX sought more time to work on the latest Dragon spacecraft, which will be debuting with the launch of Crew-10.
Meanwhile, last week, Williams, who is also the ISS commander, had her first spacewalk in seven months. This was the eighth spacewalk for Williams, who has lived on the space station before. US spacewalks were put on hold after water leaked into the airlock from the cooling loop for an astronaut's suit.
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