Elon Musk has entered into a heated argument with a Danish astronaut who criticized the billionaire's statement that former US President Joe Biden deliberately left two American astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The Guardian writes about this, UNN reports.
Details
On February 20, Andreas "Andy" Mogensen shared a segment of Fox News featuring Musk and his boss, US President Donald Trump, on the X.
In this story, Musk said that NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were abandoned on the orbital outpost by Biden for "political reasons" and that the new administration is now coming to their aid.
"What a lie. And this is from a man who complains about the dishonesty of the mainstream media," wrote the 48-year-old European Space Agency astronaut, who has flown twice to the ISS, including in 2023 on SpaceX's Crew Dragon.
Musk responded by calling Mogensen a "complete idiot" and added that "SpaceX could have returned them months ago" and that he had made such a proposal to the Biden administration.
However, Musk did not disclose the details of this proposal.
Wilmore and Williams arrived at the ISS in June on a Boeing Starliner as part of an eight-day test mission to certify the new spacecraft.
However, due to engine problems, NASA decided that the Starliner would return without a crew and instructed SpaceX to bring the astronauts home.
NASA subsequently announced that the couple would return on a SpaceX Crew-9 mission ship that launched in September with two rather than four crew members to make room for them.
The return was originally scheduled for February, but was later postponed to March due to SpaceX's delays in preparing the spacecraft for the Crew-10 mission, which will replace Crew-9.
If Musk had an alternative rescue plan that could have been implemented earlier, he did not disclose it.
"Elon, I've long admired you and what you've accomplished, especially at SpaceX and Tesla," Mogensen responded to Musk's statement.
Mogensen noted that Musk knows as well as he does that Butch and Sweeney are returning from Crew-9, and this plan has been in place since September. He also emphasized that even now Musk is not sending a rescue ship to pick them up, because they are returning on the Dragon capsule, which has been on the ISS since September.
Recall
Elon Musk's xAI company has presented its new flagship artificial intelligence model Grok 3.