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.
A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is already scheduled to return the astronauts under a plan announced by NASA in August.
The astronauts who traveled to the International Space Station aboard the Boeing Starliner are in good health, a NASA spokesperson has said, dismissing fake online reports of their death. The false narrative also includes false quotes attributed to Elon Musk.
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.
An early morning post by US President Donald Trump caused some furrowed brows in the space community after he instructed Elon Musk to "go get" the crew of Boeing's Starliner, who are currently enjoying an unexpected stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Boeing is warning of another hit to its bottom line, at least partly at the hands of the company's Calamity Capsule, the CST-100 Starliner.
SpaceX and NASA reinforce mission assurance, ensuring safe ISS crew retrieval as Boeing’s Starliner faces setbacks. Learn about their critical partnership
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.”
"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," Cheryl Warner, NASA's news chief at the agency's headquarters, said in a statement to reporters.
Trump and Musk keep referring to Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore as 'stranded' and 'abandoned,' while there is already a plan in place to bring them home.
Boeing’s Starliner achieves a critical success by docking with the ISS. This episode also covers NASA’s spacesuit issue, the final days of the Mars InSight rover, and mysterious signals from Voyager 1.