As astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams prepared to make their way back to Earth for a Tuesday-evening splashdown off the coast of Tallahassee, President Donald Trump praised the efforts to bring them home — and his own role in doing so.
“This began when I asked Elon Musk to go up and get the abandoned Astronauts, because the Biden Administration was incapable of doing so,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday, as a Musk-owned SpaceX ship waited at the International Space Station to load its human cargo and head home. “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.”
There was a rocket-sized hole in Trump’s story, however: NASA had announced plans for the astronauts’ return via SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft in August — five months before Trump returned to office.
Williams and Wilmore made it back to Earth without mishap, splashing down at 5:57 p.m. Tuesday. It was a moment of collective relief — for observers around the world who have followed the astronauts’ uncertain plight, for NASA administrators who made the controversial decision to delay their return in the name of safety, and for Musk and his SpaceX, the company that will have successfully ferried them home.
But the astronauts’ return also makes for some awkward politics: a president insistent on taking credit, and a government agency that could be facing an existential threat from the man whose company just brought its astronauts back safely.
Musk is the founder and CEO of SpaceX, the company that carried the astronauts home. He’s also leading the U.S. DOGE Service, an entity that has already made some cuts at NASA and is feared to be considering more.
Those tensions could serve as backdrop if Wilmore and Williams — perhaps two of the country’s highest-profile federal workers — travel to the White House for an event celebrating their return. The White House has not yet announced a date, but Trump has said he plans to make it happen.
“Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, no American is left behind — promises made, promises kept!” White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said in a statement Monday.
Trump has described Wilmore and Williams, both veteran astronauts and retired U.S. Navy test pilots, as “left up there” on the International Space Station. But that’s not true.
Back in June, the two pilots flew the first crewed test flight of Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station, with the expectation that they would return eight days later. As they approached the space station, some of the vehicle’s thrusters malfunctioned.
Boeing tried to identify the cause of the problem and insisted that its Starliner was safe to fly back to Earth. But by August, after more than two months of troubleshooting and deliberations, NASA officials were still not convinced the Starliner was reliable. The Boeing spacecraft returned to Earth without its crew, and NASA announced that Wilmore and Williams would instead hitch a ride on a scheduled return flight — a SpaceX Dragon capsule due to fly in early 2025.
“Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and even at its most routine,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at the time. “The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring the Boeing Starliner home uncrewed is a result of a commitment to safety.”
That’s not how Trump has described the decisions that led to the astronauts’ return. In his telling, they were abandoned by President Joe Biden.
“We’re coming up to get you, and you shouldn’t have been up there so long,” Trump said in the Oval Office two weeks ago, when asked by a reporter about his message to the astronauts. “The most incompetent president in our history has allowed that to happen to you, but this president won’t let happen. We’re going to get them out.”
Trump went on to suggest that there had been no plan to bring the astronauts home until he decided to intervene.
“I’ve authorized Elon. I said, ‘Can you get them out? … You’ve got to get them out,’” he recounted this month. “So I authorized Elon a week ago. I said, ‘You know, we have two people up there that Biden and Kamala [Harris] left up there.’ And he knows it very well. I said, ‘Are you equipped to get them?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ He’s got a Starship. And they’re preparing it right now. And so Elon is going to go up and get them.”
Charles F. Bolden, a former astronaut and NASA administrator, said Trump’s comments reflect either willful ignorance or that he was misled by Musk.
“If the chief technologist of SpaceX wasn’t aware of the plan that was put in place last August, and he advised the president to say that he was getting ready to do a rescue mission, then that speaks loads about the CEO of SpaceX,” Bolden said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy between Trump’s recounting of events and the announcement made by NASA in August. NASA also did not comment on Trump’s comments — or on his accusation that the astronauts had been abandoned by the previous president.
Trump has long been fascinated by space, seeing its exploration as a key symbol of the grand ambitions of his presidency — and using it, like so many other issues, to denigrate his political opponents.
In the summer of 2020, Trump took down a campaign video trumpeting NASA’s return to human spaceflight after criticism that his ad had politicized a major NASA event and violated the agency’s advertising rules.
At the time, a former astronaut featured in the video spoke out against it, saying she found it “disturbing” that footage of her and her family were used “in political propaganda without my knowledge or consent. That is wrong.”
Now, more than four years later, NASA is facing a delicate moment in its relationship with the president. In response to mandates from DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, NASA recently laid off 23 employees and shut down three of its departments: the Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy; the Office of the Chief Scientist; and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility branch.
More significant NASA cuts may lie ahead. And if Wilmore and Williams are invited to the White House, those who oppose further cuts will be watching to see whether, and how, the astronauts will raise those concerns with the president and with Musk.
Tactfully advocating for NASA is part of the job of being an astronaut, said John Logsdon, a professor emeritus at George Washington University and founder of the university’s Space Policy Institute.
“The selection process for astronauts emphasizes their technical qualifications but includes their ability to deal with various public situations — including the political support for the space program.” Logsdon said. “So they are NASA’s best, if you wish, lobbyists in Washington.”
What might the astronauts say to Trump?
“Well, I think they will emphasize how important the space program is to making America great again, that it is a symbol of American achievement, and the idea that large cuts to the NASA workforce and the NASA missions is not a good idea,” Logsdon said.
For some historians, Trump’s intense interest in the plight of the astronauts calls to mind another incident: the Apollo 13 mission in 1970, when the explosion of an oxygen tank forced an aborted lunar landing. For four harrowing days, the nation watched raptly as a three-man crew survived in a lunar module, uncertain whether they would return safely to Earth.
President Richard M. Nixon was deeply invested in the outcome, Logsdon said, viewing the astronauts “almost like sons that he had never had.” And he knew the outcome of the mission would reflect on his presidency.
When the astronauts made it home safely, Nixon traveled to Houston to honor the members of mission control before flying to Hawaii to greet the astronauts in person.
Presidents look presidential when they’re next to astronauts, said Luke Nichter, a professor of history at Chapman University in California.
“Upon the return of the astronauts, these were the greatest celebrities, not just in the country but in the whole world,” Nichter said. “The chance for any public figure to be seen with them at a time when not just many Americans were watching but many people around the world — I think it’s natural for someone in public life to want to be associated with their success.”
Matt Viser contributed to this report.
