When a pair of astronauts docked with the International Space Station last year, it was supposed to be for a mission lasting just over a week.

By the time they finally returned to Earth earlier this week, however, they had spent the majority of a year orbiting the planet.

Elon Musk, whose SpaceX company provided the transportation after a critical malfunction with the Boeing craft took the astronauts to the ISS, is now addressing the misinformation he insists have surrounded the Biden administration’s depiction of events.

His comments came during an interview with Sean Hannity, as Fox News reported:

In a post-landing news conference with SpaceX and NASA officials on Tuesday, Deputy Associate Administrator, NASA Space Operations Mission Directorate Joel Montalbano was asked about Trump and Musk’s claims that the Biden administration didn’t want to bring the Starliner crew back for political reasons.

“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:

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
 

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