Two astronauts who ended up having to stay at the International Space Station (ISS) for months longer than initially planned have pushed back against the idea that President Joe Biden‘s administration stranded them there.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams appeared on Fox News on Monday for an interview with “America’s Newsroom” co-anchor Bill Hemmer, speaking about their experiences on their mission following their return earlier this month.
Hemmer referenced the narrative being perpetrated by the Trump administration, which blames Biden for the astronauts’ delayed return to Earth. Trump asked Elon Musk’s SpaceX to assist with bringing the two astronauts home after stating that Biden “virtually abandoned” them.
“I just wanna put a fine point on this because, Butch, you said, we don’t feel abandoned,” Hemmer told Wilmore. “We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded. Could I use the word maroon?”
“Okay, so any of those adjectives, they’re very broad in their definition,” Wilmore responded. “So, okay, in certain respects, we were stuck. In certain respects, maybe we were stranded.”
“But based on how they were couching this, that we were left and forgotten and all that, we were nowhere near any of that at all,” the astronaut continued. “In the big scheme of things, we weren’t stuck. We were planned and trained.”
The duo also recalled their reactions to finding out that their return home would be delayed.
“My first thought was we’ve just got to pivot,” Williams said.
“If our spacecraft was going to go home based on decisions made here, and we were going to be up there ’til February, I was like, ‘Let’s make the best of it,'” she continued.
“It’s about what this human spaceflight program is about. It’s our national goals,” Wilmore told Hemmer.
“And I have to wrap… my mind around, what does our nation need out of me right now? That’s going back to when we’re in the fleet, and we’re operating from the pointy end of the spear… We’re an instrument of our nation, of our national goals. Did I think about not being there for my daughter’s high school year? Of course. But… we’ve trained them to be resilient, my daughters and my family.”
Originally published on Latin Times
