- U.S. President Donald Trump and his adviser, Elon Musk, have repeatedly claimed that former President Joe Biden left NASA’s Boeing Starliner astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore in space for political gain. Trump has claimed efforts to transport the astronauts home began with his own administration.
- Musk also alleged, in multiple instances, that his astronautics company, SpaceX, offered to bring the astronauts back but were refused by the Biden administration. During a March 14 news conference, a NASA administrator said he “can’t give a lot of clarity” about these purported conversations, but that NASA is a nonpartisan agency that “gets support from whoever’s in office.”
- However, the evidence suggests NASA was working on the Starliner crew’s return to Earth as early as August 2024 and delays were due to safety concerns and technical difficulties. In fact, the SpaceX Crew-9, which brought the astronauts home on March 18, 2025, docked at the International Space Station in September 2024, months before Trump entered office and supposedly appointed Musk to oversee the rescue mission.
Evidence suggests that — contrary to Trump and Musk’s assertions that they were responsible for finally retrieving the astronauts — NASA was discussing how to facilitate the Starliner crew’s return as early as August 2024, and that the SpaceX capsule that brought them back was not only docked at the ISS by September 2024 but scheduled for an early 2025 return. We could find no documented proof to corroborate Musk’s claim that he offered to rescue the astronauts earlier.
