SpaceX Could Have Rescued NASA Astronauts Months Earlier, Musk Says

NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore spent nearly a year on the International Space Station after their spacecraft suffered critical malfunctions. Though NASA eventually relied on SpaceX to bring them home, Elon Musk says the mission could have happened months earlier — if only the Biden administration had approved it.

Musk revealed during an interview on Fox News that SpaceX had the capability to retrieve the astronauts far sooner than NASA ultimately did, but the White House refused to accept the company’s offer. “We definitely offered to return the astronauts earlier,” Musk said. “The astronauts were only supposed to be there for eight days, and they’ve been there for almost 10 months.”

The astronauts initially launched on June 5, 2024, aboard Boeing’s Starliner, which quickly encountered issues. Helium leaks and thruster failures rendered the vehicle unsafe for return, forcing the astronauts to remain aboard the space station indefinitely. Despite the urgency of the situation, the Biden administration declined SpaceX’s proposal to bring them home.

President Donald Trump condemned the delay, arguing that Biden had abandoned the astronauts in space. In a social media post earlier this year, Trump announced that he had asked Musk to retrieve them, ensuring that a return mission finally moved forward.

Musk later credited Trump for expediting the process, emphasizing that politics had stood in the way of a swift resolution. SpaceX successfully completed the return mission on Tuesday, bringing Williams, Wilmore, Crew-9 Commander Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov back to Earth. They splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, ending an unexpectedly long stay in orbit.

When asked whether the administration’s delay was politically motivated, NASA’s Joel Montalbano did not directly address the claim, stating only that the agency acted according to the administration’s guidance.

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