By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
WASHINGTON (Worthy News) – NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore spent their first full day on Earth Wednesday after spending nine months stranded in space, a delay President Donald J. Trump blamed on the previous Biden administration.
The astronauts returned to Earth Tuesday following a spaceflight that was to last a few days but stretched into 2025 as the Boeing Starliner aircraft wasn’t safe enough to return with its crew.
The Starliner, which encountered helium leaks and propulsion issues when it reached the International Space Station, was undocked in September without Wilmore and Williams for a parachute landing in the New Mexico desert.
Since then, the Biden administration was allegedly slow to ask private space flight firm SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to help in rescue efforts, partly due to his ties to Trump.
However, soon after his return to the White House on January 20, Trump “prioritize the return of the astronauts, officials said.
“PROMISE MADE, PROMISE KEPT: President Trump pledged to rescue the astronauts stranded in space for nine months,” the White House explained on its official page on social media site X, formerly Twitter.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk joined in, congratulating his company and NASA while thanking Trump “for prioritizing this mission!”
STARLINER ASTRONAUTS
Earlier this month, Trump said he “authorized” Musk to bring the Starliner astronauts back to Earth.
He also claimed that former President Joe Biden “was embarrassed by what happened, and he said, leave them up there.”
Trump critics say NASA decided to return Wilmore and Williams in August when it was ruled that the troubled Boeing Starliner wasn’t safe enough.
Yet, Musk seemed to confirm that Trump had been “prioritizing and expediting” the astronauts’ return.
He also claimed in the interview that SpaceX had offered to the Biden administration to bring the astronauts home sooner.
In a Monday post on his social media network 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.”
LAUNCH DATE
NASA initially announced in December that the launch to pick up the astronauts, 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 to mid-March—reportedly due to pressure from Trump and Musk—when NASA decided to use a “previously flown” Dragon instead.
That’s why astronauts splashed down Tuesday off the coast of Florida after having journeyed back to Earth inside a SpaceX Dragon capsule with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
However, Wilmore and Williams repeatedly sought to dispel the notion that they were “abandoned” or “stuck” at the space station. “We don’t feel abandoned, we don’t feel stuck, we don’t feel stranded,” Wilmore said in February.
Earlier this month, Wilmore appeared to play down Trump and Musk’s claims that last year’s decision to extend the mission was politically motivated.
“The words they said, well, that’s politics. I mean, that’s part of life,” Wilmore added. “From my standpoint, politics has not played into this at all.”
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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