President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have shared a video of NASA‘s two stuck astronauts—which included one thanking the pair—ahead of their return to Earth.
They shared the clip from earlier this month on their social media accounts as a SpaceX crew capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, delivering replacements for NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams.
Newsweek contacted the White House for comment via email outside of regular business hours.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft launch on March 14, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft launch on March 14, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Why It Matters
Wilmore and Williams had expected to be gone about a week when they launched from Cape Canaveral as test pilots for Boeing’s new Starliner capsule on June 5.
But the capsule encountered so many problems that NASA bosses insisted it return empty in September. They planned in December for Wilmore and Williams to return on a SpaceX flight initially scheduled for February.
The mission drew political attention when Trump and Musk vowed to speed up the astronauts’ return and accused former president Joe Biden‘s administration of abandoning the astronauts. However, Williams and Wilmore were already scheduled to return on a SpaceX flight before Trump asked Musk to get them.
What to Know
Trump and Musk, the owner of SpaceX and a top adviser to the president, shared a clip on the social media platforms they own, Truth Social and X, that was first posted by the Daily Mail on March 6.
“We’re coming back before long so don’t make those plans without me. We’ll be back before too long,” Williams said in the clip.
Wilmore said: “We have, all of us have, the utmost respect for Mr Musk and obviously respect and admiration for our President of United States Donald Trump. We appreciate them, we appreciate all that they do for us… and we’re thankful that they are in the positions they are in.”
What People Are Saying
Musk shared the video of Williams and Wilmore in a post on X on Sunday, adding heart and rocket emojis.
Asked about the astronauts, Trump said on March 6: “We love you and we’re coming up to get you and you shouldn’t have been up there so long. The most incompetent president in our history has allowed that to happen to you… I’ve authorized Elon Musk to go and get them and he’s prepared to do so.”
NASA said in a news release on Sunday: “NASA and SpaceX met on Sunday to assess weather and splashdown conditions off Florida’s coast for the return of the agency’s Crew-9 mission from the International Space Station. Mission managers are targeting an earlier Crew-9 return opportunity based on favorable conditions forecasted for the evening of Tuesday, March 18.”
What’s Next
NASA said that subject to change based on real-time operations, the SpaceX capsule will undock from the space station at 1:05 a.m. on March 18 and splashdown off the Florida coast is expected at approximately 5:57 p.m.
