The White House is crediting President Donald Trump for the return of two “stranded” NASA astronauts who crewed the failed Boeing Starliner. However, the plan to bring home Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams was established months before Trump was elected.
The astronauts returned to Earth Tuesday after a spaceflight that was supposed to only last a few days stretched into nine months in space, a delay Trump has previously falsely suggested was the fault of the Biden Administration.
The SpaceX Dragon capsule safely splashed down off the Florida coast with Wilmore and Williams, along with the two astronauts of a mission known as Crew-9. NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov were the pair who in September flew aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule selected to return the two Starliner astronauts from the International Space Station after NASA ruled the Boeing spacecraft wasn’t up to the task.
But even though the plan had been in motion since September, when the spacecraft selected to return Wilmore and Williams docked at the orbital laboratory, Trump has repeatedly attempted to take credit for the astronauts’ return since taking office in January.
“PROMISE MADE, PROMISE KEPT: President Trump pledged to rescue the astronauts stranded in space for nine months,” the White House’s official X page posted on Tuesday.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk joined in, congratulating his company and NASA while also thanking Trump “for prioritizing this mission!“
Here’s what to know about NASA’s plan, and what, if any, influence Trump may have had over it.
Earlier this month, Trump said he authorized Musk to bring the Starliner astronauts back to Earth. He also claimed that former President Joe Biden “was embarrassed by what happened, and he said, leave them up there.”
The decision to return Wilmore and Williams with the Crew-9 mission was one NASA made in August when the space agency ruled the troubled Boeing Starliner wasn’t safe enough to return with its crew. The Starliner, which had encountered helium leaks and propulsion issues that engineers discovered when it reached the station, undocked in September without Wilmore and Williams for a parachute landing in the New Mexico desert.
In September, NASA launched the SpaceX Crew-9 mission as planned, but with one crucial change: Just two astronauts, Hague and Gorbunov, headed to the station instead of four to leave two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams. The Crew-9 mission also had to await the arrival of the Crew-10 astronauts to take their place.
While a few launch delays postponed the Crew-10 mission to reach the ISS, four different astronauts launched out of Florida on Friday and docked by Saturday.
The success paved the way for Crew-9 and the Starliner astronauts to return home Tuesday evening – bringing to an end a plan put in place months ago without Trump’s authorization.
Trump, however, may have had an influence over NASA’s decision to launch the Crew-10 replacement mission about two weeks sooner in March.
NASA initially announced in December that the Crew-10 launch, originally set for February, had been pushed to late March to give SpaceX more time to prepare a new Dragon capsule for liftoff. The launch date was then moved back up to mid-March – possibly due to pressure from Trump and Musk – when NASA decided to instead use a “previously flown” Dragon.
During their time in space, Wilmore and Williams denied the notion that they were “abandoned” or “stuck” in space while following NASA’s timeline for their return despite political wrangling.
“We don’t feel abandoned, we don’t feel stuck, we don’t feel stranded,” Wilmore told CNN Host Anderson Cooper on Feb. 13 after the host asked a question referencing Trump’s comments.
Earlier this month, Wilmore dismissed Trump and Musk’s claims that the decision last year to extend the mission was politically motivated.
“The words they said, well, that’s politics. I mean, that’s part of life,” Wilmore said during a March 4 news conference. “From my standpoint, politics has not played into this at all.”
Trump claimed on Truth Social Monday that he shared a pleasant conversation NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro and doubled down on claims the Biden Administration failed to bring the astronauts home.
“I asked Elon Musk to go up and get the abandoned Astronauts, because the Biden Administration was incapable of doing so,” Trump wrote. “They shamefully forgot about the Astronauts, because they considered it to be a very embarrassing event for them – Another thing I inherited from that failed group of incompetents.”
As the two NASA astronauts selected for the first crewed flight test of Boeing’s Starliner, Wilmore and Williams arrived in June at the space station for what was meant to be a brief orbital stay.
Though Starliner left without Wilmore and Williams, NASA decided to keep the astronauts in orbit for a few extra months rather than launch an emergency mission to return them to Earth in order to keep the space station fully staffed. It’s also not uncommon for astronauts to stay at the station well beyond 200 days, though only five NASA astronauts have now had longer spaceflights than Wilmore and Williams.
But Wilmore and Williams had plenty to do to keep themselves busy during their extra time in the cosmos.
In the months since, the original crew of the Starliner have been integrated into the station’s Expedition 72, which Williams was selected to command. They also participated in science experiments, station maintenance and spacewalks, with Williams even setting a spacewalk record.
Wilmore and Williams have expressed their support for NASA’s decision, accepting extended missions as just being part of the job of being an astronaut.
“We came up prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short,” Wilmore said earlier this month when he, Hague and Williams appeared from the station for a news conference.
This story was updated with new information.
