Crew-9 splashes down, NASA floats along with Trump nonsense

Comment The Crew-9 mission has safely returned to Earth, marking the end of Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore’s extended time in space and possibly NASA’s bipartisan leanings.

NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov successfully splashed down off the coast of Florida last night, concluding a 286-day stint in space for Williams and Wilmore.

The duo arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) in June 2024 on the first crewed test flight of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, but after issues with the Calamity Capsule, mission management elected to return the capsule to Earth empty, and have the pair become part of Crew-9.

Hague and Gorbunov arrived at the ISS on September 29, 2024, to join Williams and Wilmore. The four departed the ISS in the Crew-9 capsule on March 18, before making a successful splashdown.

If only it had been that simple.

US President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, whose SpaceX rivals Boeing, elected to use the mission as a means to berate the previous administration, beginning with a January post claiming that Musk had been instructed to “go get” the “virtually abandoned” astronauts. The astronauts were already scheduled to return to Earth as part of the Crew-9/Crew-10 rotation using a SpaceX Crew Dragon.

It got worse. Musk then insisted that an offer had been made to the previous administration to retrieve the Starliner duo, which was rejected.

Technically, such a mission would have been possible. Another Crew Dragon could have been rushed into service, and a Falcon 9 pulled from the manifest.

But the cost would have been enormous, not to mention the disruption this would have caused. Both NASA and SpaceX officials have professed ignorance of the discussion.

Trump continued on Monday, posting: “I asked Elon Musk to go up and get the abandoned Astronauts because the Biden Administration was incapable of doing so.”

While such rhetoric is par for the course with Trump, his inclusion of NASA acting administrator Janet Petro in his post, who he claimed responded to him with “Let’s bring them home NOW, Sir!” is more worrying for anyone hoping that the space agency might be able to orbit above political mudslinging.

The Register contacted NASA to verify Petro’s comment and also if the astronauts had indeed been “abandoned.”

A spokesperson told us: “I can confirm our acting administrator spoke to the President this week and, like all of us, showed her enthusiasm for returning NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission.

“It’s important to note that NASA has worked diligently under both the Trump Administration and previously under the Biden Administration, to ensure our crew returns safely.”

The Register also understands that the line within NASA is that the decision to switch Crew Dragon spacecraft was made after Trump’s request to Musk. The Crew Dragon originally intended for Crew-10 was delayed, although Trump did not mention this.

Rather than patiently explain how mission planning works and correct misunderstandings, it appears that certain elements within the agency have elected to toe the party line.

Confusion over Crew-9 and Crew-10 has extended to other parts of the US administration. The X account of the US Space Force yesterday posted a short clip of the Crew-10 launch with the words: “Today, a Falcon 9 rocket 🚀 that launched last weekend will bring U.S. Space Force Col. Nick Hague back to Earth.”

The Falcon 9 launched on Friday, March 14. We saw it with our own eyes, The Register was there on the ground in Florida in the person of this reporter. But the Crew Dragon that brought Hague back to Earth had been attached to the ISS since September last year.

As one comment put it: “This is embarrassing, guys.”

Space Force Twitter fail … click to enlarge

The Crew-9 mission to the ISS is over, and Williams and Wilmore have safely returned to Earth. However, the swirl of misinformation and falsehoods around their time in space shows no sign of abating, and formerly trusted agencies such as NASA are unwilling to correct the record. ®