The Claim

Secured the safe return of NASA astronauts who were stranded in space for nine months by the Biden Administration.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

Three factual claims are embedded in this sentence: (1) NASA astronauts were “stranded” in space, (2) the Biden Administration was responsible for stranding them, and (3) the Trump Administration “secured” their safe return.

What is being implied but not asserted?

That the Biden Administration either abandoned or neglected the astronauts, that the situation was an emergency requiring presidential intervention, and that the Trump Administration’s decisive action resolved it. The word “stranded” evokes danger and helplessness. The phrase “by the Biden Administration” implies deliberate negligence or incompetence. “Secured the safe return” implies the Trump Administration took action that would not otherwise have occurred.

What is conspicuously absent?

That Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft — not the Biden Administration — caused the extended stay. That NASA made a safety-driven decision in August 2024 to keep the astronauts on the ISS rather than risk returning them on a malfunctioning vehicle. That the return plan via SpaceX Crew-9 was established months before Trump took office. That the astronauts themselves publicly rejected the “stranded” characterization. That the ISS is a continuously crewed, well-supplied research station — not a life raft.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched on Boeing’s Starliner on June 5, 2024, for what was planned as an eight-day mission, and did not return to Earth until March 18, 2025 — 286 days later. They launched from Cape Canaveral aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket for the Boeing Crew Flight Test. Starliner docked at the ISS on June 6, but experienced five helium leaks and multiple Reaction Control System thruster failures during approach. What was supposed to be a roughly one-week test flight became a nine-and-a-half-month stay. ¹

On August 24, 2024, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced the unanimous decision to return Starliner to Earth without crew, citing safety concerns about the thruster system. Nelson stated: “The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring Boeing’s Starliner home uncrewed is the result of our commitment to safety: our core value and our North Star.” All NASA organizations polled unanimously agreed on the uncrewed return. Nelson explicitly stated: “Politics has not played any part in this decision. It absolutely has nothing to do with it.” Starliner returned empty to White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico, on September 7, 2024 — and notably experienced additional thruster malfunctions during reentry, validating the safety decision. ²

The plan to return Wilmore and Williams via SpaceX was established in August-September 2024 under the Biden Administration. SpaceX Crew-9 launched on September 29, 2024, with only two crew members (Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov) instead of the usual four, specifically to leave two empty seats for Wilmore and Williams’s return. The return was originally targeted for February 2025. This entire rescue architecture was designed, approved, and launched five months before Trump took office on January 20, 2025. ³

The astronauts themselves publicly rejected the “stranded” characterization. In a February 13, 2025 CNN interview, Butch Wilmore stated: “We don’t feel abandoned. We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded.” He elaborated: “Stranded, abandoned, stuck — that has been the narrative from day one. That is, again, not what our human spaceflight program is about.” ⁴

Boeing’s Starliner — not the Biden Administration — was responsible for the extended stay. The Boeing Starliner program, awarded a $4.2 billion fixed-price contract in September 2014 under the Obama Administration, had accumulated over $2 billion in cost overruns by February 2025. Its first uncrewed test flight in 2019 failed due to software errors. Its second uncrewed test in 2022 experienced thruster failures. The June 2024 crewed test encountered the same category of thruster problems. In November 2025, NASA and Boeing modified the contract — reducing flights from six to four, with the next flight (Starliner-1) carrying only cargo, not crew, targeting no earlier than April 2026. ⁵

The Crew-9 return was accelerated by approximately two to four weeks, not “secured” by the Trump Administration. In February 2025, NASA and SpaceX announced a schedule change: instead of using a newly built Dragon spacecraft (C213) that was experiencing construction delays, they would fly the previously-flown Dragon “Endurance” for Crew-10, enabling an earlier launch. Crew-10 launched March 14, 2025; Crew-9 splashed down March 18, 2025 — roughly two to four weeks ahead of the late-March/early-April timeline that the construction delays would have imposed. ⁶

Strong Inferences

NASA officials acknowledged Trump’s public pressure while clarifying it did not drive the decisions. Ken Bowersox, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations, said Trump’s interest “added energy to the conversation” but confirmed NASA had been discussing switching capsules “a good month before there was any discussion outside of NASA.” Steve Stich, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Manager, stated: “We were looking at this before some of those statements were made by the president and Mr. Musk.” However, NASA’s official Crew-9 splashdown press release did state: “Per President Trump’s direction, NASA and SpaceX worked diligently to pull the schedule a month earlier.” The discrepancy between working-level statements and the official press release likely reflects institutional deference to the new administration rather than a material change in the technical decision-making. ⁷

What the Evidence Shows

The factual core of this claim — that astronauts Wilmore and Williams spent approximately nine months on the ISS longer than planned and returned safely — is accurate. But every other element of the sentence is misleading or false.

The astronauts were not “stranded.” They were aboard the International Space Station, a continuously crewed, well-provisioned research facility with redundant life support systems, regular resupply missions, and multiple docked spacecraft capable of emergency evacuation. Wilmore and Williams were integrated into the station’s Expedition 71/72 crew, conducted scientific research, and performed spacewalks. The word “stranded” implies helplessness and danger that did not exist.

The Biden Administration did not cause the extended stay. Boeing’s malfunctioning Starliner spacecraft did. The decision to keep the astronauts on the ISS was a safety call made unanimously by NASA’s technical leadership — the same kind of conservative, data-driven decision-making that kept astronauts alive through the Apollo 13 crisis. The alternative — returning crew on a vehicle with known thruster failures and helium leaks — would have been the reckless choice. And notably, Starliner experienced additional thruster problems during its uncrewed return, proving the decision correct.

The Trump Administration did not “secure” the return. The entire return architecture — the Crew-9 mission with two empty seats, the crew rotation plan, the SpaceX Dragon that would carry Wilmore and Williams home — was designed, approved, funded, and launched under the Biden Administration between August and September 2024. What Trump can plausibly claim credit for is applying public pressure that may have contributed to a two-to-four-week schedule acceleration, achieved by swapping to a previously-flown Dragon capsule instead of waiting for a new one. NASA officials were diplomatically clear that this decision was already under internal discussion before Trump’s public statements. The official NASA press release attributed the acceleration to “President Trump’s direction,” but the working-level officials who made the actual decisions told a different story.

The deeper structural irony is that Boeing received its $4.2 billion Commercial Crew contract in 2014 — years before Trump’s first term — and that Starliner’s systemic failures reflect Boeing’s engineering and management problems, not any administration’s policy. If blame must be assigned to a political actor, it falls more naturally on the decades-long bipartisan relationship between Boeing and the federal government, including favorable treatment during both parties’ administrations.

The Bottom Line

The astronauts were not stranded — they were safe on the ISS and said so themselves. Boeing’s malfunctioning spacecraft, not the Biden Administration, caused the extended stay. The return plan was designed and launched entirely under Biden. The Trump Administration’s contribution was, at most, modest schedule acceleration of a few weeks on a mission that was already underway. Claiming to have “secured the safe return” of astronauts whose return was already fully planned and in progress is like claiming credit for the sunrise because you set your alarm clock.

Footnotes

1. NASA, “LIFTOFF! NASA Astronauts Pilot First Starliner Crewed Test to Station,” June 5, 2024. https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/liftoff-nasa-astronauts-pilot-first-starliner-crewed-test-to-station/ ; ABC News, “Timeline of Boeing’s Starliner mission that left NASA astronauts aboard ISS for 9 months,” March 18, 2025. https://abcnews.go.com/US/timeline-boeings-starliner-mission-left-nasa-astronauts-aboard/story?id=119867727 ↩

2. NASA, “NASA Decides to Bring Starliner Spacecraft Back to Earth Without Crew,” August 24, 2024. https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-decides-to-bring-starliner-spacecraft-back-to-earth-without-crew/ ; SpaceNews, “Musk and Trump repeat inaccurate claims about Starliner astronauts,” February 20, 2025. https://spacenews.com/musk-and-trump-repeat-inaccurate-claims-about-starliner-astronauts/ ↩

3. NASA, “NASA Decides to Bring Starliner Spacecraft Back to Earth Without Crew,” August 24, 2024. https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-decides-to-bring-starliner-spacecraft-back-to-earth-without-crew/ ; ABC News, “Timeline of Boeing’s Starliner mission,” March 18, 2025. https://abcnews.go.com/US/timeline-boeings-starliner-mission-left-nasa-astronauts-aboard/story?id=119867727 ↩

4. FactCheck.org, “The Facts Behind the Delayed Return of U.S. Astronauts,” March 18, 2025. https://www.factcheck.org/2025/03/the-facts-behind-the-delayed-return-of-u-s-astronauts/ ↩

5. CNBC, “Boeing’s Starliner losses total $1.5 billion with NASA astronauts still waiting to fly,” July 26, 2023. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/26/boeing-has-lost-1point5-billion-developing-starliner-spacecraft-for-nasa.html ; NASA, “NASA, Boeing Modify Commercial Crew Contract,” November 24, 2025. https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/commercialcrew/2025/11/24/nasa-boeing-modify-commercial-crew-contract/ ↩

6. NASA Commercial Crew Blog, “NASA, SpaceX Update Crew-10 Launch, Crew-9 Return Dates,” February 11, 2025. https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/commercialcrew/2025/02/11/nasa-spacex-update-crew-10-launch-crew-9-return-dates-2/ ; NASA, “Welcome Home! NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 Back on Earth After Science Mission,” March 18, 2025. https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/welcome-home-nasas-spacex-crew-9-back-on-earth-after-science-mission/ ↩

7. FactCheck.org, “The Facts Behind the Delayed Return of U.S. Astronauts,” March 18, 2025. https://www.factcheck.org/2025/03/the-facts-behind-the-delayed-return-of-u-s-astronauts/ ; NASA, “Welcome Home! NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 Back on Earth After Science Mission,” March 18, 2025. https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/welcome-home-nasas-spacex-crew-9-back-on-earth-after-science-mission/ ↩