Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore have been on the ISS for many months because of their failure to make the descent to Earth due to a Starliner spacecraft malfunction. President Trump promises that they will be saved by Elon Musk. It’s all supposed to happen “soon”.

Trump and astronauts
On Tuesday, January 28, US President Donald Trump remembered that American astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore have been on the International Space Station for months and a specific date for their return to Earth is still unknown.
Trump said that they would return “soon” and would be saved by none other than Elon Musk. It is worth saying that he said absolutely nothing new. Two veteran astronauts have been on the space station since June 2024. They flew there as part of a test flight of the Starliner spacecraft, but they did not risk returning to Earth due to technical problems.
Since then, their journey, which should have lasted only 8 days, has stretched over several months. The fact that they would be evacuated by a SpaceX spacecraft was known as early as last August. There was talk of it happening in February 2025.
So when’s the return?
In general, Williams and Wilmore do not require an immediate return. Their health is not in jeopardy, and they were optimistic in January. However, something has changed since then. The rescue mission has been postponed. SpaceX said it was preparing a new capsule for this and it would have to undergo additional ground tests.
Therefore, the launch of the spacecraft to return Williams and Wilmore has been postponed until March. And this is where Trump might have something new to report about it, since his campaign financing was handled by none other than Elon Musk. However, even the billionaire himself characterized the timeline for the astronauts’ return “as soon as possible.”
Analysts hope there will be no delays and the astronauts won’t have to surpass the record of 371 days that Frank Rubio had to set recently. In 2023, the reason for its delay in orbit was a Russian Soyuz that turned out to have a hole.
According to phys.org