NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore finally return home after more than nine months in space

 https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/18/science/spacex-crew-9-astronauts-space/index.html

NASA has maintained since last summer, when it announced Williams and Wilmore would join the Crew-9 team, that Crew-10 needed to be in place before the Starliner astronauts could leave orbit. That planning allowed NASA to keep the US-controlled portion of the space station fully staffed without needing to fly a separate, multimillion-dollar return mission for Williams and Wilmore. The United States jointly operates the space station with Russia, Japan, Canada and the participating countries of the European Space Agency.

The decision, however, has been the subject of apparent criticism from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, who have claimed Williams and Wilmore were abandoned by the Biden administration.

In posts about the matter on X, Musk has said SpaceX could have brought Williams and Wilmore home months ago, but an offer was denied for “political reasons.”

It’s not clear what that offer entailed or to whom it was offered.

A Biden-era senior NASA official told CNN that SpaceX never communicated such an offer to agency leadership — and the space agency likely would not have entertained the idea regardless.

If Musk had made the offer to someone outside NASA leadership, the source noted, “I’m sure they would have responded and said, ‘Well, that would cost us several $100 million extra that we don’t have for a new Dragon capsule and Falcon 9.’”

Musk has since said the offer was not made to NASA but was taken directly to the Biden White House, which “refused to allow it,” according to a post he shared on X.

It’s unclear why such a deal would have been discussed with the White House, which does not typically have direct involvement in NASA crew assignments or space station staffing matters.

A former senior Biden White House official, however, also told CNN that they never heard of such an offer from Musk or SpaceX.

“I’m not aware of any communications that came to the White House, whether directly or indirectly, along the way — as there was a close team working space policy issues at the White House,” the source said.