In August 2024, NASA announced that it would be using SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to bring back the astronauts in February 2025. In September, the mission launched Crew-9 with NASA’s Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who successfully reached the International Space Station on Sept. 29. The capsule was launched with two empty seats for the crew, including Williams and Wilmore, to return in February, after being replaced on the space station by astronauts from Crew-10. NASA officials said late February was the earliest the crew could return on SpaceX without interrupting other scheduled missions.

In response to Musk’s claims, several astronauts took to X to refute the idea that the astronauts were purposefully abandoned. Andreas Mogensen, a former SpaceX astronaut from Denmark, posted: “What a lie. And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media.”

Mogensen responded by stating, “Elon, I have long admired you and what you have accomplished, especially at SpaceX and Tesla. You know as well as I do, that Butch and Suni are returning with Crew-9, as has been the plan since last September. Even now, you are not sending up a rescue ship to bring them home. They are returning on the Dragon capsule that has been on ISS since last September.”

In an interview on CNN with Williams and Wilmore on Feb. 13, host Anderson Cooper asked if they felt abandoned by the Biden administration.

“We don’t feel abandoned. We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded,” Wilmore said from the space station, which orbits the Earth and acts as a science laboratory. “I understand why others may think that. We come prepared. We come committed. That is what your human space flight program is. It prepares for any and all contingencies that we can conceive of, and we prepare for those. So if you’ll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative, let’s change it to prepared and committed like what you’ve been hearing. That’s what we prefer.”

Williams reiterated that “Butch and I knew this was a test flight” and “that we would probably find some things [wrong with Starliner] and we found some stuff, and so that was not a surprise.”

As for the prospect of sending up a SpaceX flight just to bring them back earlier, Wilmore said, “We would never expect to come back just special for us, or anyone, unless it was a medical issue or something really out of the circumstances along those lines.”

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