For reasons were not immediately clear Spaceex founder Elon Muschus To his social media website X took over on Tuesday evening to make an astonishing room-based statement.
“The @Potus asked @SpaceX to bring the 2 astronauts home as soon as possible at the @space_station. We will do it. ” Musk wrote. “Terrible that they Bid She left the administration there for so long. “
In general, ARS Technica is generally not our politics to write stories exclusively on things that Elon Musk says about X. However, this statement was so declarative and thus a dismay for the introduction NASAIt bears a bit of explanation.
First, the most plausible explanation is that Elon Elon is. “He trolls,” said one of my best space guideline sources shortly after Musks Tweet. After all, the tweet was sent in the central time zone at 4:20 p.m. in which SpaceX is now headquarters.
Even if it is trolling, it still causes a headache in NASA.
First and foremost, NASA made great efforts to emphasize that the two astronauts were referred to here –Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams– are not stranded on the International space station. There are some debates about whether there was a time last summer when the couple, who flew to the space station with a Boeing Starliner vehicle in early Junewere briefly stranded. This mission was hobbled by Technical problemsincluding problems with the drive system from Starliner. (Ultimately Starliner flew home without his crew.) Since the arrival of SpaceX ‘crew 9 mission with two empty seats at the end of September, Wilmore and Williams have had a safe journey home. The dragon vehicle is currently being docked to the space station.
Then Musk comes with one of the loudest microphones in the world that screams that the astronauts of NASA are stranded and President Trump wants them to be saved. It is a bomb for the founder of SpaceX, who has become a close consultant of Trump.
It is also possible that Musk did not trolled and Trump asked SpaceX earlier to return Wilmore and Williams for political reasons – namely, namely the bid administration.
Neither NASA nor SpaceX replied immediately to a request for comments on Tuesday evening.
Could you come back?
If Trump asked NASA to bring the astronauts back now, the crew 9 mission could previously return to earth. It is currently planned to spray in the Pacific Ocean in early April. According to NASA and the astronauts themselves, Wilmore and Williams are doing in space. You have a lot of food and clothing and a lot to do. Sources Ars told privately. Although Wilmore and Williams initially did not expect to spend 10 months in space, they do not take any serious risks. In fact, it is part of your work to tackle this type of eventualities.
The current return date is also powered by the start of the crew 10 mission to a SpaceX vehicle. This mission flies a new Dragon spaceship, and SpaceX asked a little more time beforehand to process and prepare the spaceship for the debut start. This moved the goal of flying this mission from February to March 25th. On this date, the sources stated that it is possible that SpaceX has another dragon, which was previously flown beforehand, the dragon for using the Axiom 4 Mission Annex-to complete crew-10.
