How politics tainted the delayed homecoming of stranded astronauts

The return of two NASA astronauts – Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore – back to Earth after equipment malfunctions saw their intended week-long sojourn to space turn into a nine-month stay on the International Space Station, should be cause for national celebration. Alas, politics has tainted the stratosphere, with each side of the aisle playing a part in the blame game for the astounding delay in getting our stranded astronauts back home. 

Williams and Wilmore will have endured more than just a few missed family events and some extra time spent conducting experiments (they carried out more than 150) aboard the ISS. A biomedical engineer speaking to the Daily Mail referred to their 286 days in space as “crushing” to the human body, as Williams, 59, and Wilmore, 62, must now contend with the consequences of dehydration, major muscle atrophy, bone density loss and impaired eyesight. 

President Donald Trump addressed these health concerns in a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham last night, saying, “They have to get better. It’s going to be a little bit tough for them – it’s not easy, you know, they’re up a long time. And when they do, they’ll come to the Oval Office.”

Taking credit for the astronauts’ return, the White House posted on X last night: “PROMISE MADE, PROMISE KEPT: President Trump pledged to rescue the astronauts stranded in space for nine months. Today, they safely splashed down in the Gulf of America, thanks to @ElonMusk, @SpaceX, and @NASA!”

Trump has said the stranded astronauts were being deployed as political pawns before he resumed his presidential post, as President Biden did not want to give Team Trump positive PR ahead of the November election. In an attempt to defend Biden’s legacy, USA Today asserts Trump claiming credit for the astronauts’ return is “not quite right,” because NASA had put a plan in place “months ago without Trump’s authorization.”

The publication also acknowledges, however, that “a few launch delays” postponed the Crew-10 mission reaching the ISS. According to the New York Post, “Musk’s SpaceX in September launched a Crew Dragon capsule to rescue the pair, and it docked at the space station, but NASA opted to stall its return.” In a joint interview with Sean Hannity, Elon Musk said Williams and Wilmore were left at the ISS “for political reasons,” while some NASA administrators have denied ever knowing about Musk’s offer.

“SpaceX could have brought the astronauts back after a few months at most, and we made that offer to the Biden administration,” Musk claimed. “It was rejected for political reasons, and that’s just a fact.” Trump chimed in to say, “They didn’t have the go-ahead with Biden. He was going to leave them in space. I think he was going to leave them in space… He didn’t want the publicity.”

In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump wrote that he “asked Elon Musk to go up and get the abandoned Astronauts, because the Biden Administration was incapable of doing so. 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.”

The astronauts had said previously that they did not feel “abandoned” by the Biden administration. During an in-orbit press conference earlier this month, though, Wilmore was asked if it is true that Musk’s offer to bring them home was denied by the White House. He replied:

I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual. We have no information on that, though, whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered; who it was offered to, how that process went. That’s information that we simply don’t have. So I believe him. I don’t know all those details, and I don’t think any of us really can give you the answer that maybe that you would be hoping for.

Wimore’s 19-year-old daughter, Daryn, has been outspoken on social media, where she blamed the delays on negligence and said, “There’s a lot of politics, there’s a lot of things that I’m not at liberty to say, and that I don’t know fully about.”

There is certainly a lot about this painfully drawn-out mission most of us will never know fully about, but one thing seems certain: setting politics aside for national unity, dominance on the world stage (remember the Space Race?!) and the good of our own citizens is a (space)ship that sailed long ago.