“Yeah, so I wasn’t involved in any conversations with the previous administration,” Montalbano said. “It was clear we had a request from the current administration, and the results you saw are what we saw today with the landing of Crew-9.”
Hannity pressed Musk on the politics behind the astronauts’ delayed return, and Musk set the record straight on his communications with the previous Biden administration.
“We definitely offered to return the astronauts earlier. There’s no question about that,” Musk said.
“The astronauts were only supposed to be there for eight days, and they’ve been there for almost ten months. So, obviously, that doesn’t make any sense. SpaceX could have brought the astronauts back after a few months at most, and we made that offer to the Biden administration. It was rejected for political reasons, and that’s just a fact.”
President Donald Trump has been among the Biden administration’s many harsh critics on the topic:
NASA provided an update about what’s in store for the astronauts now that they’re back home, per Sky News:
The astronauts’ journey back from the International Space Station took 17 hours.
Senior NASA administrator Joel Montalbano described the landing as “beautiful” – and said their 150 experiments and 900 hours of research will inform future moon missions.
“The crew’s doing great… eventually they’ll make their way back to Houston,” NASA manager Steve Stich said – telling reporters they’ll get some “well-deserved time off” with their families once debriefs are complete.
They were only meant to be on the ISS for eight days when they blasted off from Earth on 5 June last year.
They were testing out Boeing’s long-awaited Starliner– a vessel designed to rival SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which is currently used to ferry astronauts into space.
But by the time they docked at the ISS, the Starliner had suffered major problems – with five helium leaks, five dead manoeuvring thrusters and a propellant valve that failed to close completely.
It returned to Earth without them after it was decided Mr Wilmore, 62, and Ms Williams, 59, would be safer waiting in orbit.
Here’s some additional coverage of the major development:
And here’s a full clip from Musk’s recent Fox News interview:
