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After nearly a year of being stranded in space, astronauts Barry «Butch» Wilmore and Sunita Williams have finally returned home. Wilmore and Williams launched from Cape Canaveral on June 4, 2024, aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule for its maiden voyage, only to face thruster failures and helium leaks. For safety reasons, the Starliner was sent back to Earth without the crew, and they’ve been stranded on the ISS ever since. It was a great moment to see SpaceX’s Dragon capsule splash down Tuesday.
Splashdown of Dragon confirmed – welcome back to Earth, Nick, Suni, Butch, and Aleks! pic.twitter.com/M4RZ6UYsQ2— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 18, 2025
The sad thing is that they could have come back sooner.
“SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago,” Elon Musk said last month in a post on X. “I OFFERED THIS DIRECTLY to the Biden administration and they refused. Return WAS pushed back for political reasons.”
Trump himself addressed the delayed return of the astronauts during his Tuesday night interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News.
“So when I came in office, I said, ‘Elon, we got to get them out. You have a rocket ship handy’—How many people have a rocket?—And Biden left them up. He abandoned them,” Trump said. “You know, we could have done this sooner, but Biden didn’t want to because he was embarrassed by what happened. So they were up there. They were supposed to be there for a few days.
