NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore respond to President Donald Trump’s allegation that they were “abandoned in space” as they prepare for their flight back to Earth in March.

NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore want to clear up any cosmic confusion about their prolonged space trip.

Three weeks after President Donald Trump said the astronauts had been “virtually abandoned” on the International Space Station, where they have been for eight months instead of the eight days they were supposed to spend there, the two spoke about how they feel about their predicament.

“We don’t feel abandoned,” Wilmore, 62, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a Feb. 13 interview. “We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded. We come prepared. We come committed.”

Floating beside Wilmore, Williams, 59, added the two were “doing pretty darn good, actually.”

Indeed, as experienced astronauts, spending time in space isn’t something they were unprepared for.

“We’ve got food, we’ve got clothes, we have great crew members up here,” she continued. “Of course, it was a little bit longer stay than we had expected, but both of us have trained to live and work on the International Space Station and I think we’ve made the most of it.”

Williams and Willmore initially traveled to the orbiting International Space Station on a Boeing Starliner capsule in June. However, their inaugural test mission experienced thruster failures and helium leaks before docking safely, prompting NASA to postpone their return to Earth and abandon the original plans to take the Starliner back home.

Now, they are set to travel back on SpaceX Crew-10 mission’s Dragon capsule, which will be launched to space March 12 for a science expedition.

“They’ll come here, rendezvous and dock,” Wilmore said. “We’ll do a turnover for about a week and we will return on or about the 19th of March.”

While Wilmore and Williams are setting the record straight, On Jan. 28, eight days after he was inaugurated, Trump said on his Truth Social network on Jan. 28 that he had asked close advisor and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk “to ‘go get’ the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration.”

NASA had previously announced that Wilmore and Sullivan would return to Earth in early 2025 on a SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule back in August, three months before Trump beat former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election to succeed former President Joe Biden.

Wilmore and Williams, meanwhile, have stressed that they aren’t worried about their extra time in space and plans to return. In fact, they admitted that it was “a lot of fun” to float around.

“I like my crazy hair up here. It gets a little Einstein look,” Williams explained. “Both of us have lived here before and it is just amazing how when you come across the hatch after you’ve been here, it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I remember what this is all like. I remember feeling what it’s like floating, and I think both of us adapted really quickly and I’m hoping the same will be true when we come back home.”

However, as Wilmore pointed out, after a lengthy stay they’ll face the same challenges all astronauts are greeted with upon their return: a reunion with gravity.

“It’s really gonna be different,” he noted. “When we get back, even to lift a pencil, we will feel the weight.” 

Source: www.eonline.com