Elon Musk says SpaceX capsule will bring home stranded ISS astronauts ‘in a few weeks’
The two NASA astronauts who have been stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) since June will be hitching a ride home on a SpaceX craft in just “a few weeks,” according to Elon Musk — as NASA prepares to launch their replacements on Wednesday night.
More than nine months after they lifted off for what was supposed to be a 8-day sojourn on the space station, castaways Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams are getting close to returning to terra firma once again.
“Yes, we’re bringing them back in a few weeks,” the SpaceX CEO said when he was asked about the rescue mission during his interview with Larry Kudlow on Fox Business Monday night.
“We’re going to get them back,” he added.
Musk has been working to retrieve the astronauts after they were left behind on the ISS due to malfunctions with their original ride home, Boeing’s Starliner capsule.
Musks claims his efforts to bring the astronauts back earlier were stonewalled by the Biden administration for “political reasons.”
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will launch the replacement Crew-10 mission is currently on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where its four person crew is expected to lift off shortly before 8 p.m. on Wednesday, NASA said on Monday.
They are scheduled to dock at the outpost on Thursday morning but the beleaguered Starliner astronauts will not return immediately as they work through a handover period with their newcomers.
A four-person crew including Wilmore and Williams will return to Earth via a SpaceX Dragon craft that has been docked on the station since September.
The exact date of their return is not immediately clear, but could be as soon as March 16, NASA has said.
Williams handed over command of the space station to Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin during a ceremony on March 7 and preparations are underway for the swap.
SpaceX launched a Crew Dragon capsule to rescue the pair last September, but NASA said that capsule — with two open seats for their return — would not return early — and would instead stay on the ISS until a subsequent launch.
Concerns over the astronauts’ wellbeing surfaced in November, particularly as images from the space station showed Williams looking gaunt and tired during the extended zero-gravity stay.
Musk and President Trump have claimed that Biden did not want to be seen working with SpaceX because it would make Trump look good ahead of the presidential election.
Wilmore said that politics did not have anything to do with the delay in an interview earlier this month — but later added that what Musk says “is absolutely factual … I believe him.”
The astronaut’s 16-year-old daughter posted on TikTok that she blames “negligence” and “a lot of politics” on her father’s long overdue return.
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