NASA's stranded astronauts have responded to Elon Musk's offer to bring them home from the International Space Station (ISS).
Barry 'Butch' Wilmore and Sunita 'Suni' Williams departed Earth on 5 June last year onboard the Boeing Starliner capsule, docking on the ISS for what was meant to be an eight-day mission.
But now, nine months down the line, the pair are still orbiting our planet thanks to several technical issues in the mission.
While a target date of 12 March has been set for their return mission to launch, it turns out that the astronauts could have returned to Earth much sooner, if Elon Musk is to be believed.
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It was announced last year that NASA would be working with Musk and SpaceX to rescue Wilmore and Williams in February, but the one month delay won't matter too much in the grand scheme of things for the astronauts.
Following technical issues with The Starliner, the astronauts have been stranded in space, with the ship returning to Earth, unmanned.
Wilmore and Williams have been helping to run the ISS during their time in space, even completing a spacewalk.
In an interview with CNN in February, Williams insisted: “We're doing pretty darn good, actually. You know, we've got food, we've got clothes. We have great crew members up here,
"We don't feel abandoned. We don't feel stuck. We don't feel stranded," she explained, adding that they prepared for everything before setting off.
Musk has commented on the situation several times, even getting into a spat on X with European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut and former ISS commander Andreas Mogensen.
The Tesla CEO claimed that he offered to bring them home earlier, blaming the final decision on political reasons, resulting in him calling the astronaut a 'r****d' after he called him out for lying.
"The real issue is that they did not want positive press for someone who supported Trump. That’s it. End of story," he claimed on X.
In a news conference that was broadcast on YouTube yesterday (4 March), Wilmore spoke about Musk's claims, saying: "From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all.
"We came up prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short. That's what we do in human space flight.
"That's what your nation's human space flight program is all about, planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that."
The astronaut then revealed that he had not heard of Musk's offer, saying: "I can only say that Mr Musk, what he says is absolutely factual.
"We have no information on that though whatsoever; what was offered, what was not offered, who it was offered to, how that processes went. That's information that we simply don't have, so I believe him.
"I don't know all those details and I don't think any of us really can give you the answer that maybe that you would be hoping for," the astronaut revealed.
But beyond them, NASA's former deputy administrator and former astronaut, Pam Melroy, said that she didn't hear of his offer either.
“An offer to bring the crew home early, it never came to headquarters,” she said to Bloomberg last month.
Melroy said that Musk didn't speak to the 'senior leadership' at NASA about the offer.
While the astronauts are expected to return on 19 or 20 March, barring any delays, a doctor revealed that they will likely need a six-week rehabilitation programme at the very least, to regain their strength.
Topics: NASA, Elon Musk, SpaceX, Space, World News
Joshua Nair