Washington: Elon Musk collided with a Danish astronaut on Thursday after space criticized his claim that former US President Joe Biden deliberately left two US astronauts stranded at the International Space Station.
Andreas “Andy” Mogensen had shared on X a Fox News clip with Musk and his boss, US President Donald Trump, where Musk claimed NASA’s butch wilmore and Suni Williams were abandoned on orbital outpost for “political reasons” of the bite, and that The new administration now came to save.
“What a lie. And from a person complaining about the lack of honesty from the mainstream media,” wrote the 48-year-old European Space Agency Astronaut, who has flown to ISS twice, including aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon Capsule during a 2023 mission.
Musk responded by calling Mogensen “fully retarded” and added that “SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago” and that he had made such an offer to the Biden administration without elaborating on what that offer brought.
Wilmore and Williams flew to ISS in June aboard a Boeing Starliner for what was intended to be an eight-day test mission to certify the new spaceship.
But Thruster problems led NASA to decide that Starliner should return without his crew and the agency caused SpaceX to bring the veteran astronauts home.
NASA then announced that the couple would return to SpaceX Crew-9 Mission’s Spaceship, which was launched in September with a crew of two instead of four to accommodate them.
The journey was originally scheduled for February, but later switched to march due to delays from SpaceX in the preparation of the spacecraft for Crew-10, whose crew will replace the crew-9’s.
If there was an alternative rescue plan that could have been executed before, Musk has not revealed it.
“Elon, I’ve long admired you and what you’ve achieved, especially on SpaceX and Tesla,” Mogensen replied to Musk’s Missive.
“You know as well as I do that Butch and Suni return with crew-9, as it has been the plan since last September. Even now you are not sending a rescue ship to bring them home. They return to the Dragon Capsule, There has been on ISS since last September.
