CAPE CANAVERAL SPACE FORCE STATION — On Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump took to social media to say that he has asked SpaceX to bring home Starliner mission astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Butch Wilmore sooner than currently planned. The pair have been on the International Space Station since June 2024.

The NASA astronauts are members of the Boeing Crew Flight Test mission. In June 2024, they left on Boeing’s Starliner capsule in a maiden flight on what was supposed to be an eightish-day mission to the International Space Station.

A series of issues from leaking hydrogen and thrusters not working resulted in the pair staying on the space station for months longer, with a targeted return date of now March 2025 as they will hitch a ride home with NASA and SpaceX’s Crew-9 members.

During a press conference in July 2024, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich admitted to Spectrum News that the U.S. space agency was considering a “back-up option” of using SpaceX to return Wilmore and Williams after spending weeks saying that it and Boeing had every intention to return the duo home on the Starliner.

Eventually, that would be the plan going forward as an empty Starliner returned to Earth in September.

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Trump posted on Truth Social, which he owns, Tuesday evening saying, “I have just asked Elon Musk and @SpaceX to “go get” the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration.”

Elon Musk, who owns both X and SpaceX, took to social media earlier Tuesday evening and stated, “The @POTUS has asked @SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the @Space_Station as soon as possible.”

Neither Musk nor Trump described how exactly that would be done or what the timeframe would be for the launch that would return the pair home.

Before Trump took office again, a plan was in place to have SpaceX launch its new Crew Dragon capsule for the Crew-10 mission in March. With new crewmembers onboard, that would allow Williams, Wilmore and Crew-9 members, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, to return home.

Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency is under Musk.

At the moment, there are only two crewed spacecraft docked on the International Space Station: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule Freedom and Roscosmos Soyuz MS-26.

Spectrum News reached out to NASA, SpaceX and Musk for comment on what the current timeframe and what the latest plans are to return Wilmore and Williams home.

NASA's News Chief Cheryl Warner stated in an email to the media, "NASA and SpaceX are expeditiously working to safely return the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore as soon as practical, while also preparing for the launch of Crew-10 to complete a handover between expeditions."

Spectrum News is awaiting a reply from SpaceX and Musk.