Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will conduct a spacewalk outside the International Space Station to swab the orbiting lab for evidence of microorganisms.

A spokesperson with NASA, which oversees SpaceX’s flights to the ISS, said “NASA and SpaceX are expeditiously working to safely return the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore as soon as practical, while also preparing for the launch of Crew-10 to complete a handover between expeditions.”

The president and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk are falsely blaming Biden for the situation, ignoring an existing plan that's been in place since last year.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said President Trump has asked the company to bring home the two NASA astronauts from Boeing’s Starliner mission on board the ISS “as soon as possible.”

While Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore’s situation is unusual, their return trip will be pretty routine, as they were already slated to fly home on a SpaceX capsule as part of a scheduled crew rotation.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams embarked on a mission to the International Space Station in 2024 with a timeline that has been anything but straightforward.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is indicating his private spaceflight company could work to bring NASA astronauts back home sooner than expected.

Astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore rode a Boeing Starliner to the station in June 2024 for what was supposed to be an eight-day mission. But NASA had concerns about the Starliner after years of delays, plus leaks and thruster problems during its trip to the station, so it came back to Earth without them in September.

President Trump just asked Elon Musk to retrieve two NASA astronauts from the International Space Station. But the duo are already slated to come home with SpaceX this spring.

NASA already had such a plan in place to return the astronauts to Earth — utilizing SpaceX. In June, Williams and Wilmore launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard Boeing’s new Starliner on what was supposed to be an eight-day test mission.

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Elon Musk's company SpaceX will "soon" begin a mission to repatriate two American astronauts who have been stranded for months on the International Space Station.