The Facts Behind the Delayed Return of U.S. Astronauts

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

The return of astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore after an extended stay on the International Space Station has been the subject of competing claims about the actions of the Trump and Biden administrations in bringing them home.

White House adviser Elon Musk, whose SpaceX company aided the astronauts’ return, said he had offered last year to bring the two astronauts home much sooner but the Biden administration declined for “political reasons.” NASA and space experts, including the two astronauts themselves, dispute that the decision was based on politics.

In a press conference on March 4, NASA officials said safety, budget concerns about a separate mission to retrieve the astronauts and a desire to keep a crew on the space station were the reasons driving the decision to have Williams and Wilmore return with a SpaceX crew, which is expected to land on Earth today.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly claimed that he expedited the return of the astronauts after making a personal appeal to Musk. The mission to return the two astronauts has been in the works since late last summer, and the timeline for their return is roughly in line with that plan.

In August 2024, NASA announced that it would be using SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to bring back the astronauts in February 2025. In September, the mission launched Crew-9 with NASA’s Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who successfully reached the International Space Station on Sept. 29. The capsule was launched with two empty seats for the crew, including Williams and Wilmore, to return in February, after being replaced on the space station by astronauts from Crew-10. NASA officials said late February was the earliest the crew could return on SpaceX without interrupting other scheduled missions.

In recent months, Musk and Trump have claimed the Biden administration decided to leave the astronauts on the space station until after the November election to avoid bad publicity.