Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk makes bombastic claim, alleging former Biden-led admin shoved two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, stranded high above Earth in International Space Station (ISS) for ‘political’ reasons. Yet Musk assured us that his company, SpaceX, would be working to get them back to Earth within the next four weeks.
Musk revealed that efforts to bring the astronauts back faster had been undertaken at the request of former U.S. President Donald Trump during a joint interview with former U.S. President Donald Trump and journalist Sean Hannity. Upon criticizing the previous administration, he deemed it unacceptable that there was a deliberate attempt to leave the astronauts in space.
The company, he also defended, had successfully returned astronauts from the ISS multiple times in the past. SpaceX had tried a rescue mission using the Crew Dragon capsule in September. The capsule was able to successfully reach the space station but was without the necessary authorization to retrieve Wilmore and Williams from Earth.
That means the two astronauts’ time has been added by a lot – far more than the original mission time of up to eight days. The reason they were still on board after their Boeing Starliner capsule was meant to bring them home: a technical problem. But its safe return was blocked by a series of malfunctions, leaving the astronauts stranded.
SpaceX is putting a return to flight in sight as Elon Musk’s claims have hit controversy, questioning political interference in space missions and NASA’s pairing with private companies for astronaut transportation. It also serves to raise questions about Boeing’s difficulties with the Starliner program and the future of space travel and governmental oversight.
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