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NASA on Wednesday (local time) said it was working with billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX to safely return the astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who are for months struck at International Space Station (ISS), back home "as soon as practical." The development came a day after US President Donald Trump said that SpaceX would "soon" begin a mission to repatriate the two American astronauts.
"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," the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said in a post on X.
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 (@NASA) January 29, 2025
Veteran astronauts Wilmore and Williams arrived at the ISS in June 2024 aboard Boeing's Starliner. They were due to spend only eight days on the orbiting laboratory, but technical problems on the spacecraft prompted NASA to change plans. The US space agency announced in August that Boeing rival SpaceX would bring the crew home in February. But their return was further postponed due to SpaceX preparing a new spacecraft.
NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than late March 2025 to launch Crew-10 to ISS. The SpaceX Crew-9 mission with NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov could return to Earth only after the arrival of Crew-10 to the orbital laboratory.
Musk, who heavily funded Donald Trump's election campaign, also wrote on X on Tuesday that the president had asked SpaceX to bring home the two astronauts "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 in a post on X.
"Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long," he added.
The billionaire's post sparked speculation that if at the behest of the Trump administration, SpaceX was to make any adjustments to the schedule it has had in place for weeks.
SpaceX, the private company founded by Musk, has been flying regular missions every six months to allow the rotation of ISS crews. Elaboration on its partnership with the private firm, the US space agency said, "NASA and SpaceX have been working together for over a decade! SpaceX has been delivering commercial resupply missions to the ISS since 2012 and has been sending the agency's Commercial Crew missions to the station since 2020."