Musk claimed without evidence Nasa’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were left stranded on orbital outpost for ‘political reasons’

Elon Musk has become embroiled in a heated row with a Danish astronaut who criticised the tech billionaire’s claim that the former US president Joe Biden abandoned two American astronauts at the International Space Station on purpose.

Andreas “Andy” Mogensen accused Musk of lying when he claimed in a Fox News interview alongside Donald Trump that Nasa’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were left stranded for “political reasons” by Biden.

“What a lie. And from someone who complains about lack of honesty from the mainstream media,” the 48-year-old European Space Agency astronaut, who has flown to the ISS twice, wrote on X.

In response, Musk called Mogensen “fully retarded”. He said SpaceX, which he owns, could have brought the astronauts back “several months ago” and that he had made such an offer to the Biden administration. Musk did not elaborate on what that offer entailed.

Wilmore and Williams flew to the ISS in June onboard a Boeing Starliner for what was meant to be an eight-day test mission to certify the new spaceship. However, thruster problems led Nasa to decide that the Starliner should return without its crew, and the agency tasked SpaceX with bringing the veteran astronauts home.

Nasa then announced the pair would return on the SpaceX Crew-9 mission’s spaceship, which launched in September with a crew of two instead of four in order to accommodate them.

The voyage home was initially scheduled for February but later shifted to March due to delays by SpaceX in preparing the spacecraft for Crew-10, whose crew will replace Crew-9’s. If there was an alternate rescue plan that could have been executed sooner, Musk has not revealed it.

Replying to Musk, Mogensen – who flew onboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule during a 2023 mission to the ISS – said: “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.”

As well as being the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, and owning X, formerly known as Twitter, Musk leads the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), an advisory department under the Trump administration.

In 2019, a court in Los Angeles found Musk not guilty of defaming the British cave explorer Vernon Unsworth, after a Twitter spat over the 2018 Thailand cave rescue during which Musk called Unsworth a “pedo guy”. Musk’s attorneys had argued that the tweet was not a statement of fact, but an insult, which is considered protected speech.

Quelle: The Guardian