White House credits Donald Trump for Starliner astronauts' return. That's not quite right.

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The White House is crediting President Donald Trump for the return of two "stranded" NASA astronauts who crewed the failed Boeing Starliner. However, the plan to bring home Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams was established months before Trump was elected.

The astronauts returned to Earth Tuesday after a spaceflight that was supposed to only last a few days stretched into nine months, a delay Trump has previously blamed on the Biden administration.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule safely splashed down off the Florida coast with Wilmore and Williams, along with the two astronauts of a mission known as Crew-9. NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov were the pair who in September flew aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule selected to return the two Starliner astronauts from the International Space Station after NASA ruled the Boeing spacecraft wasn't up to the task.

But even though the plan had been in motion since September, when the spacecraft selected to return Wilmore and Williams docked at the orbital laboratory, Trump has repeatedly attempted to take credit for the astronauts' return since taking office in January.

"PROMISE MADE, PROMISE KEPT: President Trump pledged to rescue the astronauts stranded in space for nine months," the White House's official X page posted on Tuesday.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk joined in, congratulating his company and NASA while also thanking Trump "for prioritizing this mission!"

Here's what to know about NASA's plan, and what, if any, influence Trump may have had over it.

Did Trump decide to bring astronauts home?

Earlier this month, Trump said he "authorized" Musk to bring the Starliner astronauts back to Earth. He has also claimed, without offering evidence, that former President Joe Biden "was embarrassed by what happened, and he said, leave them up there."

But the decision to return Wilmore and Williams with the Crew-9 mission was one NASA made in August when the space agency ruled the troubled Boeing Starliner wasn't safe enough to return with its crew. The Starliner, which had encountered helium leaks and propulsion issues that engineers discovered when it reached the station, undocked in September without Wilmore and Williams for a parachute landing in the New Mexico desert.

In September, NASA launched the SpaceX Crew-9 mission as planned, but with one crucial change: Just two astronauts, Hague and Gorbunov, headed to the station instead of four to leave two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams. The Crew-9 mission also had to await the arrival of the Crew-10 astronauts to take their place.

The SpaceX Crew missions have for years been routine science expeditions to the station contracted under NASA.

While a few launch delays postponed the Crew-10 mission to reach the ISS, four different astronauts launched out of Florida on Friday and docked by Saturday. The arrival paved the way for Crew-9 and the Starliner astronauts to return home Tuesday evening – bringing to an end a plan put in place months ago without Trump's authorization.

Trump, Musk take credit for 'expediting' Starliner astronauts' return

Trump, however, appears to have had an influence over NASA's decision to accelerate the launch of the Crew-10 replacement mission about two weeks sooner in March.

NASA initially announced in December that the Crew-10 launch, originally set for February, had been pushed to late-March to give SpaceX more time to prepare a new Dragon capsule for liftoff. The launch date was then moved back up to mid-March – likely due to pressure from Trump and Musk – when NASA decided to instead use a "previously flown" Dragon.

Musk seemed to confirm that in a Tuesday interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, giving Trump credit for "prioritizing and expediting" the Starliner astronauts' return. He also claimed in the interview that SpaceX had offered to the Biden administration to bring the astronauts home sooner.

Paste BN left a message with NASA's press office Wednesday morning seeking comment on Musk's claim.

In a Monday post on Truth Social, Trump further asserted that NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro agreed to his plan to "let our Astronauts come home long prior to the two week period originally approved by NASA." He added: "I look forward to seeing Butch and Suni."

Petro acknowledged Trump's influence in a statement accompanying NASA's press release about the landing.

“Per President Trump’s direction, NASA and SpaceX worked diligently to pull the schedule a month earlier," Petro said in the statement. "This international crew and our teams on the ground embraced the Trump Administration’s challenge of an updated, and somewhat unique, mission plan, to bring our crew home."

Were the astronauts actually 'stuck' in space?

Trump on Monday further doubled down on his claims that the Biden administration was at fault in the botched Starliner mission, saying it "shamefully forgot about the Astronauts, because they considered it to be a very embarrassing event for them – Another thing I inherited from that failed group of incompetents."

But Wilmore and Williams have repeatedly sought to dispel the notion that they were "abandoned" or "stuck" at the space station, insisting that preparing for extended missions is simply part of the job of being an astronaut.

"We don't feel abandoned, we don't feel stuck, we don't feel stranded," Wilmore told CNN Host Anderson Cooper on Feb. 13 after the host asked a question referencing Trump's recent comments.

Earlier this month, Wilmore also dismissed Trump and Musk's claims that the decision last year to extend the mission was politically motivated.

"The words they said, well, that’s politics. I mean, that’s part of life," Wilmore said d earlier this month when he, Hague and Williams appeared at the station for a March 4 news conference. "From my standpoint, politics has not played into this at all."

Why did NASA extend the Starliner astronauts' mission?

As the two NASA astronauts selected for the first crewed flight test of Boeing's Starliner, Wilmore and Williams arrived in June at the space station for what was meant to be a brief orbital stay.

Though Starliner left without Wilmore and Williams, NASA decided to keep the astronauts in orbit for a few extra months rather than launch an emergency mission to return them to Earth in order to keep the space station fully staffed. It's also not uncommon for astronauts to stay at the station well beyond 200 days, though only five NASA astronauts have now had longer spaceflights than Wilmore and Williams.

But Wilmore and Williams had plenty to do to keep themselves busy during their extra time in the cosmos.

In the months since, the original crew of the Starliner have been integrated into the station's Expedition 72, which Williams was selected to command. They also participated in science experiments, station maintenance and spacewalks, with Williams even setting a spacewalk record.

"We came up prepared to stay long," Wilmore said earlier this month, "even though we planned to stay short."

This story was updated with new information.