Two NASA astronauts, Indian American Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) since June 2024, received a reassuring message from President Donald Trump.
"We love you, and we're coming up to get you," he assured the duo Thursday in a message from the Oval Office, but not without taking a jab at his predecessor Joe Biden. "You shouldn't have been up there so long. The most incompetent president in our history has allowed that to happen to you, but this president won't let it happen."
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"I authorized Elon (Musk) a week ago. I said, 'You know, we have two people up there that Biden and Kamala (Harris) left up there'. And he knows it very well. I said, 'Are you equipped to get them?' He said, 'Yeah'."
Hinting at a possible SpaceX mission to bring back the astronauts, Trump said "Elon is right now preparing a ship to go up and get them. He is preparing to go up, I think in two weeks."
On a lighter note, Trump also told reporters that he hoped Williams and Wilmore "like each other, maybe they love each other, I don't know."
"But they've been left up there. Think of it. And I see the woman with the wild hair, good, solid hair she's got. There's no kidding, there's no games with her hair," he quipped.
Trump then asked reporters jokingly, "Should I go on that journey just to be on the ship when we stop?"
"If that's an option, yes," one reporter replied, adding that he would be the "first president in space." Not too impressed with the idea, Trump said, "When they come back, I'll greet them. How about that?"
Williams and Wilmore, who were expected to be gone for just eight days when they launched last June aboard Boeing's new Starliner capsule in a debut crew mission, are making their return after years of delay. The Starliner had so many problems getting to the space station that NASA ruled it too dangerous to carry anyone, and it flew back empty.
In September 2024, Musk's SpaceX launched a Crew Dragon capsule to rescue the astronauts and it docked at the ISS, but NASA opted to stall its return.
In February, the U.S. space agency announced the next crew would launch in a used capsule instead, pushing up liftoff to March 12. The two crews will spend about a week together aboard the space station before Williams and Wilmore depart with NASA's Nick Hague and the Russian Space Agency's Alexander Gorbunov.
But Williams and Wilmore's ordeal would be far from over on return -- Earth's gravity will feel like an alien force after so long in space and they would have to learn to walk again.
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When Williams and Wilmore land on March 19 or 20, they won't be heading straight home. Instead, they will undergo intensive medical evaluations to assess the toll of prolonged weightlessness.
"I've been up here long enough; right now I've been trying to remember what it's like to walk," Williams told students in a recent call, according to NewsX. "I haven't walked. I haven't sat down. I haven't laid down."
Doctors estimate it could take up to six weeks for the astronauts to regain their strength, as their muscles and bones have weakened in microgravity.