Elon Musk, the billionaire businessman and senior advisor to US President Donald Trump, made a startling claim against the Joe Biden administration during a Fox News interview on Tuesday, saying that the administration left astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore in space for political reasons. 

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The SpaceX CEO was referring to NASA astronauts of Indian origin, Williams, and Wilmore, who have been stuck at the International Space Station (ISS) since June.

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NASA and SpaceX are assigned to bring them back by March 19, 2025, through Crew-10, which is scheduled to leave for ISS on March 12.

Appearing alongside Trump during an interview on Fox News, Musk said: “They were left up there for political reasons, which is not good,” he said.

“Okay, it's not good...Well, we don't want to be complacent, but we have brought astronauts back from the space station many times before, and always with success.”

Even as he blamed the Biden administration for the delay, Trump seconded him, “They didn't have the go-ahead with Biden. He was going to leave them in space purposedly.”

Why are Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore stuck in space?

Both astronauts left for space in June and were supposed to come back to Earth after a week, but their spacecraft, Dreamliner, had some technical problems, due to which the duo couldn't come back.

Now NASA and SpaceX are sending the Crew-10 mission on March 12, which is scheduled to bring Sunita and Wilmore back in a week.

Who is Sunita Williams?

 
Sunita Williams is a veteran NASA astronaut who has been on two space missions. Selected by NASA for its space missions in 1998, Sunita was has been part of Expeditions 14/15 and 32/33. She boarded Boeing’s
 
Starliner spacecraft on June 5, 2024, for its first crewed flight. She arrived at the space station on June 6. After NASA's decision to return Starliner uncrewed, she and Butch Wilmore are living and working aboard the space station.
  

Sunita Williams' India connection

 
Sunita's father,  Deepak Pandya, was an Indian-American neuroanatomist from Jhulasan, Mehsana district, Gujarat. 
 
She practices Hinduism. In December 2006, Sunita took a copy of the Bhagavad Gita to ISS. In July 2012, she took a symbol Om and a copy of the Upanishads. 
 
In 2007, Sunita was also awarded the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Vishwa Pratibha Award by the World Gujarati Society.