Spacex: The “Crew-10” takes off: why does Musk say he will save the trapped astronauts and deny him? | Science

The mission Crew-10 He took off at the International Space Station (ISS) in the early hours of Saturday at 0:05 of the Spanish peninsular time, from the Kennedy Space Center (Florida, USA). It would have been a routine mission, but The accident of the Starliner ship last summer changed everything. Two NASA astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, had to stay for a long stay at the station, when they only spent a week. And the crew that now travels on the road to the ISS will lighten them, so that they can finally return to Earth.

If everything goes as expected, the Crew-10 It will arrive at the station this Sunday and, after a few days of transfer of responsibility, starting from next Tuesday Williams and Wilmore will already be free to undertake their spatial flight back home.

That trip had to be in February, but Spacex did not have the dragon capsule to bring the four new astronauts to the station. The delays like this are common in the space race. Elon Musk’s Space Company He was forced to change the ship, In order not to delay the replacement in the crew of the station, inhabited permanently since 2020. And that inconvenience would have gone unnoticed, if it were not due to the fact that Musk himself announced at the end of January that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, had commissioned rescue “as soon as possible the two astronauts trapped in the space station”. According to him, the Biden administration had left them abandoned to the space station.

And Musk’s response to that alleged commission was the mission Crew-10. The richest man in the world and Trump’s trustee consultant ignored that NASA had already commissioned that mission in August 2024 and that his company had not satisfied the expiry. The alternative version of the facts presented by Trump and Musk caused amazement in the space community: both the affected astronauts and the same and NASA denied that version, in measured declarations to avoid the clash with the two US leaders.

AND Crew-10 A rescue mission?

No, the astronauts do not return to the ship that has just taken off. THE Crew-10 It is a mission of routine for the space station, of which about six months take place: a crew of four astronauts arrives in a Spacex dragon ship to replace another. After a few days together, the crew raised part in another ship of the same model, in which half a year before reaching the ISS. In this case, in the capsule of Crew-9 Two astronauts only made the first trip: the American Nick Hague and the Russian Alexander Gorbunov. There were two empty seats on the ship, so that Williams and Wilmore could take them on to the return flight. If a mission can be considered the rescue is that, the Crew-9, who arrived at the station in September 2024.

Are there astronauts trapped in the ISS?

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived in June 2024 at the International Space Station – but in another type of ship: a Starriner, from Boeing – to spend only a few days there. I’ve been there for more than 9 months. Everyone knows them as the astronauts “trapped in space”, since the Starriner had some Elio losses during your first leg; And his return flight was postponed, again and again, until he was canceled.

But they have always had a ship available to return. During the summer, NASA insisted on the fact that they could return to the Boeing ship, if necessary; But after two months of investigation, the cause of the failures in the propulsion system has not been clarified, the space agency decided that the ship has returned to earth on its own. He did it without problems.

And since the end of last September, they have a list to return their Spacex capsule, in which Hague and Gorbunov arrived. Musk and Trump ignore those facts and go further: in a recent joint interview in the fox chain, they insisted on the idea of ​​having been abandoned by Biden, who according to them did not plan to bring them back to space.

Did Musk offered to bring them before and Biden rejected him and postponed his return?

NASA had Musk from the first moment to bring them back. And they decided they would return to a Spacex ship in February. Together with his followers on his social network X, Musk has spread the following statement without any test: “They are still there for political reasons. I offered to save them immediately and I refused because they hate me.

The American space agency denies that it was a political decision imposed from above. Two leaders of NASA, Ken Bowersoz and Steve Stich, explained in a recent press apparition that the decisions were taken – with the help of Spacex to mix the options – based on the technical and budget criteria of the departments of the space agency involved: that’s why it was immediately excluded to bring them immediately, In a specific mission for this, due to its very high cost. The solution was to integrate them into the usual rotation of the crew of the international space complex. Therefore, Williams and Wilmore have to wait for the normal stay of their classmates Hague and Gorbunov. Together, the four form the crew of the Crew-9.

And once this route has been adopted, the idea of ​​an expected return of the astronauts of the astronauts was also rejected by logistics Crew-9before those of the Crew-10: This would leave a single crew member in the NASA for weeks or months on board, which could hardly respect only all maintenance and research activities assigned to the Agency.

What do astronauts say?

They had the normal activity of an astronaut in ISS. Suni Williams is the current commander of the station, where he had been twice before. In recent months, Williams has beaten several records. It is the woman who accumulates more hours of walks in space And this week too Passed the 600 days out of the earth: No American man was more time than her in space; Only one woman, the astronaut Peggy Whitson, who spent 675 days in orbit.

In February, during a Live interview from ISS in News of the CBSThe ISS commander denied Trump and Musk’s statements: “I don’t think his words are precise. We do not feel abandoned, senses that we are part of a team and this is a great honor, “said Williams, so thinking he is trapped is not to understand the role of an astronaut. “We have food and clothes. We can go home if something really bad will happen to the ISS, “he added.

Wilmore agreed on this evaluation and asked the interviewer for help to change that rhetoric of “trapped and abandoned to committed and prepared”. In an apparition of the next press, Wilmore He denied that they were still at the station for political reasonsAnd he said he had no information that Musk would offer to bring them back to the ground in 2024 and that Biden had refused. But he didn’t want to directly deny Musk: “I believe him. Certainly what he says are made.

Another astronaut, the Danish Andy Mogensen – who was also commander of the station -,, Accused Musk to lie, And he replied By calling him “total delay” and “idiot”. A few hours later, the billionaire offered Trump a exorbitant “as soon as possible” the space station, to which he no longer sees meaning. Once again, Musk ignored that – in June 2024, Biden being president – NASA had already hired him to do it when the ISS concludes his operations in 2030.

Have Trump and Musk reached the return of “trapped astronauts”?

When you decide not to return to their original ship, the Starriner Boeing, his return was for last February. If everything is fine, they will do it a month after that period that NASA agreed in the summer of 2024 with Musk. However, another way of seeing it is that Williams and Wilmore will return home a month before what was expected when Trump took power.

In December, NASA had given Spacex until a couple of months of extension until April. The company wanted to use a completely new dragon ship for Crew-10, But technical problems arose and they could not have it in February, as expected. Finally, nor Spacex could be able to finish the new capsule for April, NASA has imposed a change of ship to the Musk company So that the return of Williams and Wilmore was no longer delayed: his replacement crew just took off in a dragon that is recycled and had already flown before the ISS.

With that change, Musk can now say that he has satisfied Trump’s wishes to advance the mission. What he has not explained is Because first this caused his delay. Because you wanted to use a new ship for the Crew-10When did it become a delicate mission? And when in December the problems were known, why did not choose to change it for an already tested space capsule?