WASHINGTON – President Trump said Tuesday he hopes that US astronauts Butch Wilmore and Snie Williams will be rescued by an oval office when they “get better” after the much-anticipated return to Earth on Tuesday.
Wilmore, 62, and Williams, 59, head home 278 days late to SpaceX capsules after being left in space last June when defects were found at Boeing Returncraft.
“Number one, they need to get better,” Trump said in a tape-taped interview on Fox News' Anchor Lowline Graham just before the astronaut's successful splashdown in the US Bay Tuesday evening.
“You know, when you're there and you can't pull into your muscles, you don't have gravity, you can lift 1,000 pounds like this,” Trump said.
“They have to get, they have to get better. It'll be a little difficult for them. It's not easy. They've been there for a long time, and when they do, they'll come to the oval office.”
President and CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk has accused former President Joe Biden of leaving his company in space for a long time.
“They were left there for political reasons, but that's not good,” Musk said last month.
“He was trying to leave them in space. I think he was going to put them in space… he didn't want to promote,” Trump insisted before his mission to bring them home.
In September, SpaceX launched a crew dragon capsule to save the pair and docked it to the space station, but NASA chose to stop the return.
NASA said two astronauts will have to wait for yet another SpaceX rescue vehicle to arrive with alternative scientists in December.
