WASHINGTON – SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is indicating his private spaceflight company could work to bring NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back home sooner than expected.
Musk wrote Tuesday evening on X that President Donald Trump had asked SpaceX to get the beleaguered Boeing Starliner astronauts back on Earth “as soon as possible.”
Following months of delays, their latest scheduled return flight would occur no sooner than late March or early April, some 10 months after launching.
“We will do so,” Musk said in the statement. “Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.”
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Williams and Wilmore are expected to return to Earth with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alex Gorbunov, both of whom arrived at the space station in September on board the Crew-9 mission. The four will fly back home only once Crew-10 arrives, which in December was delayed to no earlier than March 2025 once NASA and SpaceX teams realized more time was needed to complete processing on a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission.
NASA astronauts Anne McClain, commander, and Nichole Ayers, pilot; JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, mission specialist; and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov continue training for the Crew-10 mission at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, a post on NASA’s blog states.
It’s unclear if NASA would have to pay SpaceX for an additional flight to return the crew ahead of schedule, as well as if processing for the new Dragon capsule will be hastened or skirted completely as a result of Musk’s new rush.
As for Boeing, a $3.8 billion fourth-quarter loss posted Tuesday indicates it experienced nearly a billion dollars in losses for each month of 2024, losing more than $35 billion since 2019 in the wake of two 737 Max jet crashes which killed 346 people. The Q4 report was attributed in large part to a labor stoppage, job cuts and issues with government programs.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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