A NASA astronaut has spoken out on Elon Musk’s shocking claim about the real reason two astronauts are stuck in space.
Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams have been stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) since June 5, 2024. The original mission was scheduled to be 8 days long.
Wilmore, 61, and his fellow astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams, 58, set out on what was intended to be an eight-day mission to the ISS on June 5. However, thruster and leak issues with Boeing’s Starliner capsule after liftoff disrupted their planned return.
On August 8, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, Steve Stich, suggested that the astronauts might return on SpaceX Crew-9’s flight in February. “We have been working with SpaceX to ensure they are ready to respond with Crew-9 as a contingency. We have not formally committed to this path, but we wanted to ensure we had all that flexibility in place,” Stich explained.
“Our prime option is to return Butch and Suni on Starliner. However, we have done the requisite planning to make sure we have other options open.”
As per the Washingtonian magazine, the astronauts are paid the same way any employee is paid on a business trip, so essentially their normal annual salary. The company supplies food, drink transport and lodging. Of course there is nowhere for them to really spend money up there.
Former NASA employee Cady Coleman has revealed: “There is some small amount of money per day for incidentals that they end up being legally obligated to pay you.”
She added that being in space is like “…you’re a fish in an aquarium, where it’s sort of dark and you’re gliding through this wonderful place,”
Now, during an interview with Donald Trump, Musk said “They were left up there for political reasons, which is not good,”
“Well, we don’t want to be complacent, but we have brought astronauts back from the space station many times before, and always with success.”
To which Trump chimed in that Biden was ‘going to leave them in space’.
Now, Wilmore has spoken out about Trump and Musk’s comments.
“Obviously we’ve heard some of these different things that have been said, I can tell you at the outset we have all of us have the utmost respect for Mr Musk and obviously respect and admiration for our President of the United States Donald Trump,”
He continued: “The words they’ve said ‘politics’, I mean that’s part of life, we understand that.
“We know what we’ve lived up here, we know the the ins and outs and the specifics that they may not be privy to – and I’m sure that they have some issues that they are dealing with, information that they have that we are not privy to.”
“I can only say that Mr Musk, what he says is absolutely factual – I have no, we have no, information on that though whatsoever, what was offered, what was, what was not offered, who it was offered to, how that process went.
“That’s information that we simply don’t have so, I believe him. I don’t know all those details and I don’t think any of us really can give you the answer that maybe that you would be hoping for.”
NASA shared a recent update: “NASA and SpaceX are accelerating the target launch and return dates for the upcoming crew rotation missions to and from the International Space Station.
“The agency’s Crew-10 launch now is targeting Wednesday, March 12, pending mission readiness and completion of the agency’s certification of flight readiness process. The Crew-9 mission is planned for return to Earth following a several day handover period with the newly arrived Crew-10 expedition crew.”
