Washington, Mar 19: Astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore have returned home after their over nine-month extended stay at the International Space Station (ISS). NASA’s Crew-9 returned in SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and splashed down off the coast of Florida at 3:27 am (IST). SpaceX CEO Elon Musk congratulated SpaceX and NASA teams for “another safe astronaut return”. Musk also thanked his friend and US President Donald Trump for prioritising the mission.
“Congratulations to the @SpaceX and @NASA teams for another safe astronaut return! Thank you to @POTUS for prioritizing this mission!”
In an interview with Fox News, Musk claimed that SpaceX offered former President Joe Biden’s administration to bring back the two astronauts earlier but it was “rejected for political reasons.”
“We definitely offered to return the astronauts earlier. There is no question about that. The astronauts were only supposed to be there for eight days and they have been there for almost 10 months. Obvioulsy, that doesn’t make any sense. SpaceX could have brought the astronauts after a few months at most and we made that offer to Biden administration. It was rejected for political reasons and that’s just a fact,” he said.
Earlier in January, Billionaire Elon Musk said that President Trump has asked him to facilitate the return of the two Boeing Starliner astronauts, who have been on the space station since June 2024, as soon as possible.
The SpaceX CEO said it was “terrible” that the Biden administration “left them there so long”.
“The @POTUS has asked @SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the @Space_Station as soon as possible. We will do so,” Musk said in a post on X.