Elon Musk and Donald Trump have made plenty of hay around Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, two astronauts that have been stuck on the International Space Station since last June. Just a month into the Trump administration, Musk has found that successfully swapping ISS crews on time is easier said than done.
A joint launch between Musk-led SpaceX and NASA was set to send a crew to the orbiting station and begin the process of sending the waiting Wilmore and Williams back to Earth. However, that Wednesday launch was scrubbed when Cape Canaveral crews detected a problem with a clamp that helps to hold the Falcon 9 rocket upright on the launchpad. The postponed launch could be rescheduled as soon as Thursday, provided the issue is addressed.
Musk and Trump have disingenuously used Wilmore and Williams to portray former President Joe Biden as negligent. In an interview with Sean Hannity in February, Musk said the astronauts were “left up there for political reasons.” Musk failed to mention that the initial SpaceX flight to swap the ISS crews was scheduled for December but was delayed while NASA and SpaceX processed a new Dragon spacecraft.
The rhetoric around the two astronauts became superheated when Dutch astronaut Andreas Mogensen accused Musk of lying about the mission. Musk called Mogensen a slur and maintained that the astronauts’ extended stay was politically motivated. Earlier this week, Trump said the delay was caused by the “most incompetent president in history.”
The astronauts, for their part, maintain that they were never stranded.
“That’s been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck — and I get it, we both get it,” Wilmore said in an interview with CNN in February. “Help us change the narrative; let’s change it to prepared and committed despite what you’ve been hearing. That’s what we prefer.”
