Elon Musk says SpaceX will rescue two ‘stranded’ astronauts. Here’s why that is confusing

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, Boeing's Crew Flight Test Commander and Pilot respectively, inspect safety hardware aboard the International Space Station on Aug. 9. (NASA via CNN Newsource)

In a post on the social media platform X, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk claimed Tuesday that the Biden Administration left two astronauts “stranded” and said President Donald Trump has asked SpaceX to step in to rescue them.

But NASA already put such a plan in place months ago when it asked SpaceX to return astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore from the International Space Station as part of its Crew-9 mission. A delay in that plan was then announced in December because mission teams said they needed more time to prepare a new SpaceX vehicle.

“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’s post reads. “Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.”

In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, President Trump reiterated the remark, saying “the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration.”

“They have been waiting for many months on @Space Station,” the post reads. “Elon will soon be on his way. Hopefully, all will be safe. Good luck Elon!!!”

When asked for comment about the ambiguous declarations from Musk and Trump, NASA replied that it is “expeditiously working to safely return the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts,” as move that, in the agency’s words, will take place “as soon as practical.”

It’s still not clear whether, at the behest of the Trump administration, the agency will make any adjustments to the schedule it has had in place for weeks. NASA did not respond to follow-up questions Wednesday.

CNN also reached out to SpaceX and the White House for comment. Neither immediately responded.

While Williams and Wilmore’s situation is unusual, with the two astronauts unable to return home on the Boeing spacecraft that took them to the space station, their return trip is slated to be relatively routine, as they are due to fly home with other astronauts as part of a scheduled crew rotation.

Williams and Wilmore piloted the first crewed mission of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which launched from Florida in June 2024 and experienced a rocky journey to the ISS. The astronauts were initially slated to spend about a week at the orbiting laboratory.

After Starliner arrived at the space station, NASA and Boeing worked for weeks to better understand the problems — including helium leaks and propulsion issues — that plagued the first leg of the test mission.

NASA ultimately decided it was too risky to return Starliner with crew. And the agency announced last August that it was asking SpaceX to bring Williams and Wilmore home aboard the SpaceX Crew-9 capsule. That vehicle is currently docked with the space station, where Williams and Wilmore have become official members of the ISS staff as they await their return home.

A timeline for return

NASA previously said that the Crew-9 capsule would return home as soon as February. But the agency updated that timeline in December, saying that SpaceX needed more time to complete the capsule it would use for the Crew-10 mission, which, following NASA’s precedence, would need to launch before Crew-9 leaves the ISS. At the time, the agency said Crew-9 would target its return no earlier than late March.

In its statement Wednesday, NASA indicated the Crew-9 spacecraft would not return home with Williams and Wilmore before Crew-10 arrives at the ISS. Such a move would leave just one astronaut — NASA’s Don Pettit, who flew to the station aboard a Russian Soyuz vehicle — to manage the entire U.S.-controlled section of the ISS.

Crew-9 will return home “as soon as practical,” the space agency’s statement reads, “while also preparing for the launch of Crew-10 to complete a handover between expeditions.”

In a statement to CNN, former NASA Administrator Bill Nelson — who helmed the agency under Biden and stepped down from the post when Trump took office earlier this month — said, “SpaceX will bring Butch and Suni back on a Dragon spacecraft as Crew 9 on a regular rotation after Crew 10 has arrived. The handover from one crew to the other is important to maintain the ISS and keep all astronauts safe.”

While acknowledging that there have been difficult parts of their mission, Williams and Willmore appeared in good spirits during a Jan. 8 interview from the space station.

“We have plenty of clothes. We are well fed,” Wilmore said.

Williams added, “It’s just a great team and — no, it doesn’t feel like we’re castaways.

“Eventually we want to go home,” she added, “because we left our families a little while ago, but we have a lot to do while we’re up here.”

Williams completed a spacewalk last week and both Williams and Wilmore are scheduled to venture out of the ISS for another spacewalk Thursday.

‘We have absolutely insisted on safety’

Since mission teams began the long process of evaluating the Starliner spacecraft’s issues — and ultimately deciding to bring Williams and Wilmore home on a SpaceX capsule — officials at both NASA and Boeing have insisted that the astronauts were never stranded.

Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, noted during a news conference last year that Williams and Wilmore always had the option to fly home on Starliner in case of an emergency or, once the SpaceX Crew-9 vehicle arrived, to get back to Earth aboard that vessel.

“In my view, they’re never stuck or stranded,” Stich said. “They always had a way to depart the space station. And to me, when somebody is stranded, there’s a location where they cannot leave.”

In an interview with CNN last week, Nelson, the former NASA chief, spoke in depth about the decision to extend the astronauts’ stay in space, emphasizing that the decision was made with astronaut safety top of mind — and despite Boeing’s objections.

Among NASA leadership, the decision announced in August to fly Williams and Wilmore home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon rather than Starship was unanimous.

”Pam (Melroy, the deputy administrator, and) the number three position at NASA, Bob Cabana, had all flown in space — the three of us,” Nelson said. “So all three of us were enormously impacted by the experiences that we had had (with the Columbia and Challenger disasters), and as a result of that, we have absolutely insisted on as much safety as we could have — and we have pounded that message.”

Nelson added, “At the end, there was a disagreement with Boeing. Boeing thought it was safe for them to come back on the Starliner. But NASA was unanimous in saying that they should not return on Starliner.”

That’s why the agency opted to bring the astronauts home on SpaceX’s Crew-9.

What’s next for Butch and Suni

SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission, which also includes NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov among its crew, arrived at the orbiting outpost in September. Williams and Wilmore have now been on the station for more than seven months, and they will have tallied up roughly nine months in space if they return home in late March or early April.

Routine missions to the International Space Station regularly last six months. But it’s not uncommon for astronauts to get an unexpected extension while in orbit — for days, weeks or even months.

NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, for example, holds the U.S. record for the longest continuous stay on the space station. He spent 371 days there on a mission that ended in 2023.