The White House on Wednesday highlighted US President Donald Trump’s role in bringing back NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore safely to Earth, after being stuck in space for more than nine months.
“PROMISE MADE, PROMISE KEPT: President Trump pledged to rescue the astronauts stranded in space for nine months. Today, they safely splashed down in the Gulf of America, thanks to @ElonMusk, @SpaceX, and @NASA!” White House said in a post on X.
Williams and Wilmore stayed in space for 286 days, which was 278 days longer than they had planned. During their time in space, they orbited Earth 4,576 times and traveled 121 million miles (195 million kilometers) before coming back home.
Donald Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday, explaining that he had asked Elon Musk to rescue the stranded astronauts because the Biden Administration was unable to do so. He claimed that the administration had shamefully neglected the astronauts, seeing it as an embarrassing situation for them.
Trump added that this was yet another issue he inherited from the “failed group of incompetents.” This came as a SpaceX ship, owned by Musk, was preparing to take the astronauts back from the International Space Station.
Musk is the founder and CEO of SpaceX, the company that brought the astronauts back. He also leads the U.S. DOGE Service, which has already made some budget cuts at NASA and is thought to be planning more.