President Trump on Tuesday announced that he has asked SpaceX founder Elon Musk to “go get” two NASA astronauts who have been aboard the International Space Station since June awaiting a return trip to Earth.

Despite the statement from President Trump, NASA had already scheduled the astronauts' return for late March or April.

A spokesperson with NASA, which oversees SpaceX’s flights to the ISS, said “NASA and SpaceX are expeditiously working to safely return the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore as soon as practical, while also preparing for the launch of Crew-10 to complete a handover between expeditions.”

While Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore’s situation is unusual, their return trip will be pretty routine, as they were already slated to fly home on a SpaceX capsule as part of a scheduled crew rotation.

Late Tuesday afternoon, Elon Musk put out a message on X saying that President Donald Trump had asked him to return the two Boeing Starliner astronauts who have been on the space station since June as soon as possible.

The founder of SpaceX said President Trump had asked his company to return two astronauts aboard the space station to Earth “as soon as possible.” NASA said it would do that “as soon as practical.”

Starliner co-pilot Sunita Williams is now the world's most experienced female spacewalker, moving up to No. 4 overall.

SpaceX and Vast Space are looking for research ideas to fly aboard Vast's new Haven-1 space station launching later this year.

So the return of Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore has never been a political story—until this week. And it's a good thing that the two will be in space tomorrow because, as attested to in the tagline for the movie Alien, in space, no one can hear you scream.

Elon Musk says Donald Trump has asked SpaceX to rescue two astronauts who have been in space for more than seven months — even though NASA has said there's a plan in place.

NASA astronauts Sunita "Suni" Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore have been on the International Space Station since June, even though they initially expected to stay for just eight days. They'll be back on Earth in late March.