The NASA Wilmore Butch said that politics does not affect its return to earth

• Astronauts from NASA Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams held a press conference last week.
• Wilmore said politics had not influenced the calendar when he and Williams will return to Earth.
• Elon Musk said astronauts had been left at the international space station for “political reasons”.

NASA astronaut, Butch Wilmore, said that politics was not the reason why he and the Suni Williams pilot are still almost in space Nine months after their expectations on earth.

The two were launched on the Boeing Starliner ship on June 5, 2024, planning to stay on the international space station for about a week. It’s been more than 275 days since.

Before their return scheduled for late March, Wilmore and Williams organized a press conference of the international space station last week, answering questions on their mission, their return and how politics plays a role.

Although Wilmore and Williams are around 250 miles from the earth, the comments made by President Donald Trump and the founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, put them under political spotlight.

In January, Trump said Wilmore and Williams were “practically abandoned by the Biden administration” in an article on Truth Social.

Musk, Doge’s face, said the two astronauts had been left in space for “political reasons” during a joint interview with Trump on Fox News in February.

The billionaire reiterated this assertion during a spit on X with the astronaut of the European space agency Andreas Mogensen, saying that he had proposed to bring back Williams and Wilmore to the house on a SpaceX ship, but the Biden administration has decreased.

During the press conference, a journalist asked if Wilmore and Williams thought that politics had influenced his calendar to return to earth.

“From my point of view, politics does not play at all,” said Wilmore at last week’s press conference, adding: “We prepared to stay for a long time, even if we had planned to stay short. This is what we do in human space flight. This is what the human flight program of your nation is all about unknown and unexpected contingencies.”

When he was asked how he felt like he was at the center of a political history following the comments of Trump and Musk, Wilmore said that politics was “part of life” and that he and his teammates on board the ISS – Williams and Nick Hague – support the United States and its leaders.

Astronauts have been in space since June 2024

In June, the two astronauts went to the space on board the Starliner ship of Boeing to make its first crew flight, which was intended to prove that Boeing could be used for traveling in the human routine space.

However, five of the Starliner reaction control system propellants worked badly when he flew to the ISS. The spaceship helium system also flees.

NASA and Boeing do not know how the propellers would occur on the flight to Earth, have carried out weeks of tests and criticism. In the end, NASA did not feel confident in the spacecraft of Boeing and typed SpaceX from Elon Musk to bring back Wilmore and Williams.

Although the pair was expected on Earth in February, a delay with the SpaceX crew spacecraft means that they should not come back before the end of March.

NASA plans to launch a new crew, nicknamed the crew 10, in space on March 12. If everything goes as planned, after the arrival of the crew 10 at the ISS, the crew -9 – including Wilmore and Williams – will give operations to the new team.

“After the transfer, NASA and SpaceX will prepare to return to the astronauts of NASA Nick Hague, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, as well as Roscosmos Cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aboard the crew-9 under weather conditions awaiting Splashdown sites off the Florida coast,” said NASA on its website.

Representatives of NASA, SpaceX, Musk and the White House did not respond to a request for comments made outside of regular work hours. A Boeing representative referred to NASA.