Astronaut Butch Wilmore on Wednesday denied the involvement of politics in the delay of his return to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS), contradicting claims otherwise by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
What Happened: “From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all,” Wilmore said in a live on Tuesday. “We came up prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short. That’s what we do in human space flight. That’s what your nation’s human space flight program is all about, planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that.”
Wilmore added that he has the “utmost respect” for Musk and “what he says is absolutely factual” though the astronauts themselves are not aware of the negotiations back on Earth regarding their return.
Musk in February said that his company offered to bring the two astronauts back last year but the Biden administration refused it.
"We would have made it work within the annual budget. The real issue is that they did not want positive press for someone who supported Trump," Musk, a Trump ally, said.
“SpaceX could have sent up another Dragon and brought them home 6 months ago, but the Biden White House (not NASA) refused to allow it,” Musk said in another post on Wednesday.
Return Of Starliner Astronauts: Williams and Wilmore launched to the International Space Station aboard Starliner spacecraft in June and were supposed to return in about eight days.
However, technical issues identified with the spacecraft while docking delayed a return, and the space agency subsequently decided to scrap bringing back the two astronauts on the Starliner spacecraft.
The Starliner subsequently returned without the astronauts on Sept. 6. The two astronauts, NASA then said, will return with Crew 9 members Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov when they return home aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
The space agency is now targeting Wednesday, March 12 for the launch of its Crew-10 mission to the space station.
Following a few days’ handover period where crew-9 astronauts will familiarize the newly arrived crew-10 with ongoing science and station maintenance work, crew-9 will return to Earth with Hague, Williams, Wilmore, and Gorbunov aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.
The return of crew-9, however, will also rely on weather conditions at the dragon spacecraft’s splashdown site off the coast of Florida, NASA said.
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Photo courtesy: NASA
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