A public blame-game has erupted over who’s responsible for leaving two NASA astronauts stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) for over eight months.
Last week, Elon Musk blamed NASA’s choice to extend Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore’s ISS mission on ‘political reasons’ during a FOX News joint interview with President Donald Trump, who added that Biden was going to ‘leave them in space.’
Rudy Ridolfi, a respected former Space System Commander in the US military, told DailyMail.com that ‘the Biden administration’s vitriolic hate for Elon’ may have influenced how NASA handled the situation.
Williams and Wilmore embarked on what was supposed to be an eight-day ISS mission aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft last June. But their capsule was plagued by thruster issues and helium leaks before, during and after the launch.
These numerous technical issues drove NASA to postpone the astronauts’ return flight, but the agency still entertained the possibility of using Starliner to bring them home and gave Boeing more than 12 weeks to try and fix the issues from the ground.
In late August, NASA officials decided there was still too much uncertainty about Starliner’s performance and tapped SpaceX to bring Williams and Wilmore home instead, sending Starliner home uncrewed the following month.
But ‘Elon coming to the rescue was not in the cards,’ Ridolfi said. He suggested the reason NASA did not tap SpaceX sooner may have been due to the Biden administration’s contentious relationship with its CEO, Musk.
‘The Biden Administration relying on SpaceX to return the astronauts would put its decisions on Starliner into question,’ he said. ‘In their world, Boeing was the leading space company.’
During a FOX News joint interview with President Donald Trump on Tuesday, Elon Musk said astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore were ‘left [on the International Space Station] for political reasons, which is not good’
Since that August decision, Williams and Wilmore’s return date has been changed multiple times. Currently, NASA is aiming to bring them home around March 19 or 20.
By that time, what should have been an eight-day mission will have extended to more than nine months.
On Thursday, Musk claimed he tried to accelerate the Starliner crew’s return long ago, but was turned down.
‘SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago. I offered this directly to the Biden administration and they refused. Return WAS pushed back for political reasons,’ he said in a post on X, a social media site he owns.
Neal K. Shah is an AI expert who has tracking Musk’s foray in politics,
He believes that when Elon said NASA’s decision was ‘political’ he was pointing to ‘NASA’s tangled web of contracts, corporate interests and administrative decisions.’
Shah explained that political agendas and inter-agency disputes can influence NASA decisions, such as which companies’ spacecraft to use and how to manage public relations.
‘These partnerships are in NASA’s best interests. Boeing’s and NASA’s credibility are on the line,’ he said.
‘If anything goes wrong in their partnership, NASA’s working relationships with all its contractors could suffer. And then there’s the financial impact.’
NASA signed a $4.2 billion contract with Boeing to fund Starliner’s development and its test flights, including the mission that left Williams and Wilmore stuck on the ISS.
Essentially, Musk ‘seems to think the astronauts’ prolonged stay may be evidence that priorities other than the astronauts’ immediate welfare were taking precedence,’ he said.
Bruce McAndless III, an author and expert on American space history, told DailyMail.com: ‘It’s unclear how politics, writ large, played a role in NASA’s decision.’
‘If there was any ‘politics’ involved, it may have been an agency bias in favor of SpaceX’s successful track record over the troubled Starliner program,’ he added.
Starliner returned to Earth uncrewed in September, leaving its astronauts to await a ride home on a SpaceX spacecraft. Their current return date is slated for March 19 or 20
By the time they get home, Williams and Wilmore will have spent more than nine months aboard the International Space Station
SpaceX has become one of NASA’s most utilized contractors, and it’s possible that its track record of reliability factored into the agency’s decision to bring Williams and Wilmore home on one of their spacecraft, according to McAndless.
NASA officials have refuted claims that politics influenced their choices.
‘I can tell you unequivocally, from a personal standpoint, that politics has not played any part in this decision,’ then-NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during the August briefing where he announced the decision. ‘It absolutely has nothing to do with it.’
Other industry sources have said they were also unaware of any political influence on that decision.
What’s more, NASA officials have repeatedly said the Starliner crew is not ‘stranded’ or ‘abandoned,’ and the astronauts themselves have echoed those statements.
During a recent interview with CNN, Wilmore said: ‘we don’t feel abandoned. We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded. I understand why others may think that. We come prepared. We come committed.’
In a statement emailed to DailyMail.com on Friday, a NASA spokesperson said: ‘NASA is focused on safely executing our crew rotation missions and work aboard the International Space Station for the benefit of humanity and future long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars.’
The spokesperson also noted that in January, NASA made changes to the SpaceX launch schedule that should allow Williams and Wilmore to return home earlier than the launch date that had been set in December, 2024.
