Elon Musk Suggests SpaceX Will Accelerate Return of NASA Astronauts

SpaceX is scheduled to bring home two astronauts who have been on the International Space Station since June. Mr. Musk said President Trump had asked for that to occur “as soon as possible.”

In a post on X on Tuesday evening, Elon Musk said President Trump had asked his rocket company SpaceX to bring home “as soon as possible” two NASA astronauts who have been on the International Space Station since June.

SpaceX, in fact, is already scheduled to bring those two astronauts home, but no earlier than late March, along with two other astronauts who are currently on board. NASA has not responded to questions about whether it was indeed working to have those astronauts come home sooner, which could leave the space station understaffed.

Hours later, Mr. Trump in his own post on the website Truth Social, confirmed the request, stating that “Elon will soon be on his way,” without setting a time frame for a return trip.

The astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, docked at the space station in June. Their trip was not supposed to last much longer than a week or two in orbit as part of a test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. But because Starliner’s propulsion system malfunctioned during the trip there, NASA repeatedly extended the pair’s stay as engineers tried to figure out what had gone wrong.

In his posting, Mr. Musk added, “Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.”

In his Truth Social post, Mr. Trump echoed that sentiment, claiming that Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore had been “virtually abandoned in space by the Biden administration.” In fact, the space station has been resupplied four times since the two arrived.