Donald Trump says he asked 'a favor' of Elon Musk to bring back astronauts from ISS
President Donald Trump claimed to have "asked a favor" of Elon Musk to complete the retrieval of astronauts from the International Space Station, continuing to take partisan swipes at the Biden administration.
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that is set to bring Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore back home docked at the station since September and has been the vehicle planned for their return since then. Despite that, Trump said in comments in the Oval Office Thursday that he "authorized Elon a week ago" to retrieve them.
Trump also claimed that former President Joe Biden "was embarrassed by what happened, and he said, leave them up there."
The astronauts previously told CNN host Anderson Cooper that they did not feel "stranded" at the station, a notion that has been difficult for NASA and the astronauts to put to rest due in part to Trump and Musk's political wrangling.
"We don't feel abandoned, we don't feel stuck, we don't feel stranded," Wilmore told Cooper on Feb. 13 after the host asked a question referencing Trump's comments.
What happened with the Starliner?
As the two astronauts selected for the Starliner's first crewed flight test, Wilmore and Williams launched in June on a mission to test the Boeing Starliner, a vehicle intended to one day join the SpaceX Dragon in transporting NASA astronauts to orbit.
The pair are experienced astronauts who are both on their third venture to the space station.
Their return home, however, was delayed when NASA uncovered technical issues with the spacecraft that ultimately forced the space agency to send the Starliner back to Earth in early September without its crew.
The SpaceX Dragon selected as the vehicle to instead bring Williams and Wilmore back to Earth has been at the station since late-September after arriving with the Crew-9 mission. Under NASA's plan, that vehicle transported a truncated crew of two astronauts instead of a full contingent of four to leave empty seats for Williams and Wilmore on the return trip.
The Starliner crew members were then folded into the Crew-9 mission, whose spacefarers are continuing to serve out the full duration of their orbital stay.
The Dragon capsule transporting the four-member crew of Crew-10, which will succeed Crew-9, is due to launch as early as March 12 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA said in a mission blog update. As the name suggests, the mission is the 10th rotation mission to the station under NASA's commercial crew program.
"We're going to hand the baton to Crew-10 and we are going to return to Earth at the end of a successful long-duration mission," Hague said during a Tuesday news conference from orbit.
Once the new astronauts arrive, a few days of handover activities will occur before Williams and Wilmore can join Crew-9 in the SpaceX Dragon to undock from the International Space Station.
Wilmore previously told CNN that the return voyage could possibly take place March 19.
Contributing: Joey Garrison