The mission Crew-10 He has taken off to the International Space Station (ISS) in the early hours of this Saturday at 0:05 Spanish peninsular time, from the Kennedy Space Center (Florida, USA). It was going to be a routine mission, but. Two NASA astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, had to stay for a long stay at the station, when they were only going to spend a week. And the crew that now travels on the way to the ISS will relieve them, so that they can finally return to Earth.
If everything goes as planned, the Crew-10 He will arrive at the station this Sunday and, after a few days of transfer of responsibilities, starting next Monday Williams and Wilmore will already be free to undertake their space flight back home.
That trip had to have been in February, but Spacex failed to have the dragon capsule to take the four new astronauts to the station. Delays like this are common in the space race. Elon Musk’s space company so as not to delay the replacement in the crew of the station, permanently inhabited since 2020. And that inconvenience would have gone unnoticed, if it were not because Musk himself announced at the end of January that the president of the United States, Donald Trump, had commissioned him. According to him, the Biden administration had left them abandoned at the space station.
And Musk’s response to that alleged commission was the mission Crew-10. The richest man in the world, and Trump’s trust advisor, ignored that NASA had already commissioned that mission in August 2024 and that his company had not fulfilled the deadline. The alternative version of the facts presented by Trump and Musk has caused stupor in the space community: both the affected astronauts themselves and NASA have denied that version, in statements measured to avoid confrontation with the two US leaders.
Is it Crew-10 A rescue mission?
No, astronauts are not going back to the ship that has just taken off. The Crew-10 It is a routine mission to the space station, of which approximately six months take place: a crew of four astronauts arrives in a Dragon ship in Spacex to replace another. After a few days together, the relieved crew leaves in another ship of the same model, in which half a year before it had reached the ISS. In this case, in the capsule of the Crew-9 They only made the first trip two astronauts: the American Nick Hague and the Russian Alexander Gorbunov. On the ship there were two empty seats, so that Williams and Wilmore could occupy them on the return flight. that arrived at the station in September 2024.
Are there astronauts trapped in the ISS?
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived in June 2024 to the International Space Station – but in another type of ship: a Starliner, from Boeing – to spend there only a few days. They have been there for more than 9 months. Everyone knows them as astronauts “trapped in space”, since the Starliner had some; And his return flight was postponed, again and again, until he was canceled.
But they have always had a ship at their disposal to return. Throughout the summer, NASA insisted that they could have returned in the Boeing ship if necessary; But after two months of investigation, the cause of the failures in the propulsion system was not clarified, the space agency decided that the ship returned alone to the earth. He did it without problems.
And since the end of last September, they have a list to return their own Spacex capsule, in which Hague and Gorbunov arrived. Musk and Trump ignore those facts and go further: in a recent joint interview in the Fox chain, they insisted on the idea that they had been abandoned by Biden, who according to them had no plan to bring them back from space.
Did Musk offer to bring them before and Biden rejected him and postponed his return?
NASA has had Musk from the first moment to bring them back. And decided that they would return in February in a Spacex ship. Together with his followers on his social network X, Musk has spread without any tests the following statement: “They are still there for political reasons. I offered to rescue them immediately and refused because they hate me. ”
The American space agency denies that it was a political decision imposed from above. Two NASA executives, Ken Bowersox and Steve Stich, have explained in a recent press appearance that the decisions were made – with Spacex’s help to shuffle options – based on technical and budgetary criteria of the departments of the space agency involved: that is why it was immediately ruled out bringing them immediately ,. The solution was to integrate them into the usual rotation of crew of the international space complex. Therefore, Williams and Wilmore have to wait for the normal stay of their classmates Hague and Gorbunov. Together, the four form the crew of the Crew-9.
And once this route was adopted, the idea of an anticipated return of astronauts of the astronauts was also dismissed by logistics Crew-9before those of the Crew-10: That would leave a single crewman in NASA on board for weeks or months, who could hardly comply with only all maintenance and research tasks assigned to the agency.
What do astronauts say?
They have had the normal activity of an astronaut in the ISS. Suni Williams is the current commander of the station, where he had been twice before. In recent months, Williams has broken several records. And, in addition, this week no American man has been more time than her in space; Only a woman, the astronaut Peggy Whitson, who has spent 675 days in orbit.
In February, during one, the ISS commander denied Trump’s and Musk statements: “I don’t think her words are precise. We do not feel abandoned, senses that we are part of a team and that is a great honor, ”said Williams, for whom to think they are trapped is not to understand the role of an astronaut. “We have food and clothes. We can go back home if something really bad will happen to the ISS, ”he added.
Wilmore agreed on that assessment and asked the interviewer for help to change that rhetoric of “trapped and abandoned to committed and prepared.” In a later press appearance, Wilmore, and said that he had no information that Musk would have offered to bring them back to land in 2024 and that Biden had refused. But he didn’t want to deny Musk directly: “I believe him. Surely what he says are facts. ”
Another astronaut, the Danish Andy Mogensen – who was also commander of the station – and he responded to a few hours, the billionaire offered Trump to which he no longer sees meaning. Again, Musk ignored that – in June 2024, Biden being president – NASA had already hired him to do so, when the ISS concludes its operations in 2030.
Have Trump and Musk achieved the return of the “trapped astronauts”?
When deciding not to return to their original ship, the Boeing Starliner, its return was located for last February. If everything goes well, they will do it a month after that period that NASA agreed in summer of 2024 with Musk. However, another way of seeing it is that Williams and Wilmore will return home a month before what was planned when Trump assumed power.
In December, NASA had given Spacex until a couple of months of extension, until April. The company wanted to use a completely new dragon ship for the Crew-10, But technical problems arose and could not have it in February, as planned. Finally, nor could SpaceX be able to finish the new capsule for April, so that the return of Williams and Wilmore was not delayed anymore: his replacement crew has just taken off in a dragon that is recycled, and had already flown before the ISS.
With that change, Musk can now say that he has fulfilled Trump’s wishes to advance the mission. What has not explained is why did you want to use a new ship for the Crew-10When did it become a delicate mission? And when in December the problems were known, why didn’t he choose to change it for a space capsule already tested?
