NASA astronauts reveal who was 'to blame' for getting 'stranded' in space in first speech since returning to earth
31 March 2025, 19:28 | Updated: 31 March 2025, 22:25
NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams spoke out for the first time since being stuck in space for nearly nine months.
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The pair admitted NASA, Boeing and themselves were to blame for the unexpected outcome.
Barry Willmore, the commander of the crew flight test admitted to Fox News: "there's things that I did not ask that I should have asked. I didn't know at the time that I needed to ask them."
He claimed Boeing and NASA were to blame for the "shortcomings in tests and shortcomings in preparations".
Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived at the International Space Station on June 5, and were only supposed to be in orbit for eight days.
In a press conference on Monday evening, Williams said she was surprised by the public interest in their delayed space mission.
"Life goes on up there. I mentioned today that we pivoted and became [ISS] crew members."
"You maybe sort of get tunnel visioned into doing your job," she continued.
"We were just really focused on what we were doing. The world doesn't revolve around us but we revolve around it."
She added: "I don't think we were aware to the degree [people were interested], pretty honoured and humbled by the fact of when we came home, it was like 'wow there are a lot of people'."
Nasa astronauts return to Earth after nine months stuck in space
Instead, following a slew of setbacks, a simple test of Boeing's Starliner, turned into a months-long mission to rescue them.
The starliner that carried Butch and Suni to the ISS was returned to Earth for repairs, leaving the two astronauts stranded in space.
But early on 18 March, a SpaceX crew capsule arrived at the International Space Station, delivering the replacements for the two stuck astronauts and allowing them to begin their journey home. The pair shortly splashed down off the coast of Florida.
The astronauts revealed their reactions to learning they would be stranded in space.
"My first thought was we just gotta pivot," Williams told Fox News.
"If this was the destiny, if our spacecraft was gonna go home based on decisions made and we were gonna be up there until February, I was like 'okay, let's make the best of it."
"We were ready to just jump into it and take on the tasks that were given to us," she said.
Read More: The ravaging effects of space on the human body revealed as astronauts touch down after 286 days
Wilmore admitted he thought about his family when he discovered they would be in orbit for an extended period.
"It's not about me," he said.
"It's about what this human spaceflight program is about. It's our national goals."
"And did I think about not being there for my daughter's high school year? Of course. But compartmentalize. We've trained them to be resilient."
The pair repeatedly told Fox News they did not feel stuck, abandoned or stranded.
"Any of those adjectives, they're very broad in their definition," Wilmore asserted.
"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.
"We didn't get to come home the way we planned. So in one definition we're stuck. But in the big scheme of things, we weren't stuck. We were planned, trained."
He added that Boeing did not fail them, and laughing a complex system into space naturally has its challenges.
"The spacecraft is pretty complicated in the way they've integrated all the different types of systems together," Williams said.
"This is the most robust spacecraft we have in the inventory. There's nothing that can do everything that Starliner can do," Wilmore said.
The rescue of both astronauts became embroiled in what can only be described as political football, with Donald Trump pledging his hard-right billionaire ally Elon Musk could rescue them at any moment, while Joe Biden accused Musk of "abandoning" them.
Speaking in February, Butch told CNN: “We don’t feel abandoned, we don’t feel stuck, we don’t feel stranded. I understand why others may think that … if you’ll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative, let’s change it to ‘prepared and committed’, that’s what we prefer.”
As the astronauts returned to earth off the coast of Florida, in an extraordinary turn, a school of curious dolphins swam up to the capsule, as relief teams worked to open it up and get the pair out.
When the SpaceX relief team arrived, Wilmore swung open the space station's hatch and then rang the ship's bell as the new arrivals floated in one by one on Sunday and were greeted with hugs and handshakes.
"It was a wonderful day," Ms Williams told mission control. "Great to see our friends arrive."
Butch and Suni returning vessel undocked from the orbiting outpost at 1.05am ET (5.05am GMT) on Tuesday 18 March and began its 17-hour descent to Earth.
The Boeing Starliner capsule encountered so many problems that NASA insisted it returned to Earth empty, leaving its test pilots behind to wait for a SpaceX lift.
Their ride arrived in late September with a downsized crew of two and two empty seats reserved for the leg back. But more delays resulted when their replacements' new capsule needed extensive battery repairs.
An older capsule took its place, pushing up their return by a couple of weeks to mid-March