Elon Musk and Donald Trump continue to manipulate the facts through social media. Elon Musk wrote on Twitter/X that President Trump had instructed him to return astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore, who were "forgotten" by the previous administration, from the ISS. But the fact is that Musk has to return these astronauts anyway. NASA reached an agreement with SpaceX during President Biden's administration, and the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft has already been docked for the ISS.
"The @POTUS has asked @SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the @Space_Stationas soon as possible. We will do so. Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long," Musk wrote in his typical style.
"I have just asked Elon Musk and SpaceX to "go get" the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration. Good luck Elon!!!" Trump emphasized.
After these two posts, the space community is in a state of confusion. The fact is that astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore, who remained on the ISS due to problems with the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, were supposed to be picked up by the SpaceX Dragon. NASA agreed to this with SpaceX back in the summer of 2024, during the term of President Biden, who, according to Musk and Trump, abandoned the astronauts to their fate.
Moreover, the SpaceX Crew-9 mission ship, on which Williams and Wilmore are to return, has been docked to the ISS since September 2024. It deliberately brought only two crew members, NASA astronaut Nick Haig and Russian Alexander Gorbunov, to bring down four.
And Williams and Wilmore cannot be called "stuck on the ISS" either. Instead of a short test flight, they received a standard NASA stay on the International Space Station, became full members of Expeditions 71/72/73, and performed their share of scientific and technical work on the station.
Elon Musk is well aware of all this, but he is deliberately manipulating the facts for the sake of hype and promoting himself and Trump as the real saviors of America. As for the Boeing Crew Flight Test/SpaceX Crew-9 mission team, in this case they are simply hostages of the new US administration's political games. We hope that their return to Earth, which has long been scheduled for February-March 2025, will go smoothly.