Ahead of Sunita Williams' return, Musk resorts to slurs when accused of false space station claim
An astronaut who previously piloted one of Elon Musk's spacecrafts to the ISS and back called out his “lie" about Sunita Williams' delayed return to Earth.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been doubling down on the Joe Biden accusations every chance they’ve got. With the recently elected president of the US taking over after his predecessor, the MAGA leader openly bashed the previous administration for “abandoning” Starliner astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore in space.
Thereafter, Elon Musk also jumped on the bandwagon, blaming it on the previous Democratic POTUS as he wrote on X: “The @POTUS has asked @SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the @Space_Station as soon as possible. We will do so. Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.”
Elon Musk and Donald Trump continue accusing Joe Biden
Just this week, Fox News’s Sean Hannity again gave the duo the floor to pan the Biden administration for the NASA space heroes’ seemingly never-ending stay on board the International Space Station. The SpaceX boss contended that Sunita Williams and her mission partner Butch Wilmore had been left in space for ‘political reasons.’
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Again accusing former President Joe Biden of the prolonged wait, Musk added, “We have brought astronauts back from the space station many times before, and always with success.”
Then, Trump said, “They didn’t have the go-ahead with Biden.”
“He was going to leave them in space. I think he was going to leave them in space … He didn’t want the publicity.”
Williams and Wilmore are finally expected to return home with other Crew-9 members this March. However, such promises have been made one too many times, inciting uncertainty in the hearts of many.
Sunita Williams' delayed return: Astronaut lashes out at Elon Musk for painting lies
Despite the long wait testing the astronauts’ patience, the Starliner duo has consistently maintained that they were ready for the unprecedented twists and turns when they first took for Boeing’s milestone crewed mission in the first week of June 2024. The pair have said nothing but that they’re not stuck in space and haven’t been abandoned.
Yet the growing narrative around them has only gotten more inflated over time. Listening to Musk’s heavy allegations on national TV, Danish engineer and astronaut Andreas Mogensen hit back at him on X on Friday. Accusing him of spreading lies, the space hero who piloted Musk’s company’s Crew-7 mission to the ISS in 2023, took to his social media to sound the alarm against Musk’s rhetoric. “What a lie. And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media.”
Also read | Astronauts NOT stuck in space: Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore react to Trump saying they were 'abandoned'
SpaceX boss blows up at accusations
Elon Musk didn’t take it well. He instantly turned to name-calling and dropping hateful slurs against the Mogensen. “What a lie. And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media.” he wrote on X.
The tug-of-war continued with the astronaut’s fierce response, “You know as well as I do, that Butch and Suni are returning with Crew-9, as has been the plan since last September. Even now, you are not sending up a rescue ship to bring them home. They are returning on the Dragon capsule that has been on ISS since last September.”
The Crew-10 mission members, carrying NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, will take off for the ISS on March 12. Once their capsule docks with the space station, Williams and Wilmore will carry out a week-long handover before undocking themselves and embarking on a home return journey to Earth. “The plan is that Crew-10 will launch on 12 March, complete a one-week turnover, and we will return on 19 March,” Wilmore told CNN.
