ISS astronauts reject call for early retirement of the station

AUSTIN, Texas — Astronauts on the International Space Station said they disagreed with Elon Musk’s claim that the station was past its prime and should be deorbited in as soon as two years.Speaking to reporters March 4, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been on the station since June on a flawed Starliner test flight, and Nick Hague, the commander of the Crew-9 mission that will bring the two back with him later this month, addressed political issues like an early retirement of the ISS and Musk’s claim he offered NASA an early return of the Starliner crew.That included comments on social media by Musk on Feb. 20 where he said the ISS “has served its purpose” and has “very little incremental utility.” Musk called for deorbiting the ISS as soon as possible, which he said should be in two years. NASA’s current plans call for operating the ISS to 2030.“I actually was extremely impressed coming up here and seeing how much science is going on,” Williams said when asked about Musk’s comments. “I would say we’re actually in our prime right now. We’ve got all the power, all the facilities, up and operating.”“I would think that right now was probably not the right time to call it quits,” she concluded. “We have probably until 2030 in our agreements, and I think that’s probably really accurate, because we should make the most of this space station for our taxpayers and for all of our international partners, and hold our obligations.”Williams and Wilmore were also asked about comments by Musk in recent weeks where he has claimed that last fall he offered the Biden administration to bring back the two astronauts, rather than have them stay until the end of the Crew-9 mission as NASA planned.“From my standpoint, politics has not played into this at all,” Wilmore said of that extended stay on the ISS, a view he added was shared by his crewmates. While he and Williams planned to spend as little as eight days on the ISS, he said they trained for a long-duration mission as a contingency, enabling “somewhat of a seamless transition” into a long mission.Wilmore said later that he trusted Musk when he said SpaceX had offered an earlier return. “I can only say Mr. Musk, what he says, is absolutely factual,” Wilmore said. “We have no information about that whatsoever, though: what was offered, what was not offered, who it was offered to, how that process went. That’s information that we simply don’t have.”“I believe him,” Wilmore concluded. “I don’t know all those details and I don’t think any of us can give you the answer.”Musk has not provided any evidence to support claims he offered an early return of Wilmore and Williams to the White House last fall. Former NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy told Bloomberg Feb. 24 that she was unaware of any proposal that Musk might have offered the White House.When he was NASA administrator, Bill Nelson said in August 2024 that politics did not play a role in the agency’s decision to return Starliner without the two astronauts on board. Musk also hasn’t explained why he didn’t approach NASA with the proposal, choosing instead to make the offer to the White House despite his increasingly contentious relationship with the Biden administration.NASA is instead proceeding with its plan announced in August to have Wilmore and Williams return on the Crew-9 Crew Dragon spacecraft, which launched with two empty seats to provide room for their return. NASA did not consider bringing that capsule back early to ensure there would be an overlap with the Crew-10 mission launching as soon as March 12“When I launched in late September, our planned return date was the end of February,” Hague said. “Given the amount of training that’s required to get a crew ready and the complexities associated with getting a spacecraft ready to launch and operate in space, targeting a March return is pretty much on target.”Because Williams and Wilmore did not launch as part of a planned Crew Dragon mission, they do not have customized pressure suits, using instead suits either on the station or brought up on cargo spacecraft.That means, Williams said, they don’t have their names on them like a typical Crew Dragon suit. “But that’s ok. We’re just Butch and Suni and everybody knows who we are by now.”“We do have Sharpies up here,” Wilmore added, “so my suit might have a name on it.”