President Trump on Thursday said tech billionaire Elon Musk is preparing to launch a SpaceX ship in two weeks to return NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to Earth from the International Space Station.
Mr. Trump reiterated his accusation that former President Joseph R. Biden stranded U.S. astronauts in space for months over politics.
“They left them alone. Biden left them up there. I know everything about it. We have two astronauts that are stuck in space. I have asked Elon. I said, ’Do me a favor. Can you get them out?’ He said, ’Yes,’” Mr. Trump said. “He is preparing to go up, I think, in two weeks.”
Mr. Trump said he believes Mr. Biden left the two astronauts in space because he was “embarrassed by what happened.”
“And he said, ’Leave them up there.’ I would have said, if you’re embarrassed, you’ve got to get them out. Elon is right now preparing a ship to go up and get them,” the president said.
In a message to Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore, Mr. Trump said, “We love you, and we’re coming up to get you. And you shouldn’t have been up there so long. The most incompetent president in our history has allowed that to happen to you, but this president won’t let it happen.”
Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore left Earth in June 2024 for an eight-day mission to test Boeing Starliner’s capsule, but the capsule later had technical problems and NASA decided to keep the pair on the International Space Station while the capsule returned to Earth without them.
During the nine months on the ISS, the astronauts have been conducting research and science experiments.
“They were left up there for political reasons, which is not good,” Mr. Musk said while sitting next to Mr. Trump during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Mr. Williams and Ms. Wilmore were asked whether Mr. Musk’s statements about the Biden administration were true. Mr. Wilmore said they were “absolutely factual.”
“I can tell you at the outset, all of us have the utmost respect for Mr. Musk and obviously, respect and admiration for our president of the United States, Donald Trump. The words they’ve said, politics, I mean, that’s part of life,” said Mr. Wilmore. “We understand that. And there’s an important reason why we have a political system and the political system that we do have, and we’re behind it 100%.”
Mr. Wilmore said that he and Ms. Williams were given “no information whatsoever” on what actually was going on behind the scenes.
