Trump asks Musk to bring back two astronauts ‘stranded’ on space station
Trump asks Musk to bring back two astronauts ‘stranded’ on space station
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Nasa says Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams are not stranded and will return to Earth by end of March. Donald Trump has asked Elon Musk’s SpaceX to bring back two astronauts “stranded” in space, despite Nasa saying they are not stranded and will return to Earth by the end of March.
Trump said that he had asked Musk and SpaceX to get “the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration”. The US president added on Truth Social: “Good luck Elon!!!”. The two astronauts are Nasa’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were blasted into space in Boeing’s Starliner capsule in June, arriving at the International Space Station where they were expected to stay for just 10 days.
Technical issues, such as thrusters that did not work fully, delayed the duo’s return. The spacecraft returned to Earth without them and Wilmore and Williams have been at the space station ever since. Nasa has insisted that the two astronauts are not stranded in space, akin to Matt Damon in The Martian, and that they could be returned at any time. However, bringing them back now could leave the space station understaffed and jeopardize the science and maintenance of the outpost so a mission to bring several new astronauts there has been formulated.
