US President Donald Trump had some words of appreciation for NASA's Indian-origin astronaut Sunita Williams' hair as he told a pair of stranded astronauts aboard the International Space Station that "we're coming up to get you."
Trump, 78, mused Thursday about the possibility of personally launching a rescue team into orbit to help bring astronauts Butch Wilmore and Williams back to Earth — and blasted former President Joe Biden for their eight-day mission stretching to nine months and counting.
“Biden left them up there,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“We have two astronauts that are stuck in space. I have asked Elon (Musk), I said, ‘Do me a favour. Can you get them out?' He said, ‘Yes.' He is preparing to go up, I think in two weeks.” He added that Musk is “right now preparing a ship to go up” and get them.
"And I see the woman with the wild hair, good, solid head of hair she's got. There's no kidding, there's no games with her hair,” Trump said during remarks in the Oval Office Thursday while talking about Williams.
Trump was responding to a question about Williams and Wilmore, who have been stranded on the International Space Station for the past nine months.
When asked what his message is for the two astronauts, Trump said “We love you, and we're coming up to get you. And you shouldn't have been up there so long.” Describing Biden as the “most incompetent president in our history”, Trump said he "allowed that to happen to you, but this president won't let it happen.
“We're going to get them out. We're coming up to get you,” Trump said, lifting his head and looking up, as if sending the message to the astronauts.
"They've been left up there. I hope they like each other, but they've been... maybe they'll love each other, I don't know, but they've been left up there. Think of it. There's a danger up there too. It can have some failures up there. That would be very bad. You got to get them out,” Trump said.
“So I've authorised Elon. A week ago, I said, we have two people up there that Biden and Kamala (Harris) left up there, and he knows it very well. I said, ‘Are you equipped to get them?' He said, ‘Yeah.' He's got a starship, and they're preparing it right now, and so Elon is going to go up and get them.
“Should I go on that journey just to be on the ship,” Trump said amid laughter from the reporters present in the Oval Office.
Musk said in a post on X that “the astronauts were only supposed to be up there for 8 days and now have been there for 8 months.
“SpaceX could have sent up another Dragon and brought them home 6 months ago, but the Biden White House (not NASA) refused to allow it. President Trump asked to bring them back as soon as possible and we are doing so,” he said.
Williams, 59, and Wilmore went on what was meant to be an eight-day mission to the ISS aboard Boeing's Starliner in June 2024. However, technical issues including helium leaks and thruster malfunctions meant that the Starliner was unsafe for their return.
In January this year, Williams broke the record for total spacewalking time by a woman by logging 62 hours and 6 minutes of spacewalk when she and Wilmore had conducted a spacewalk that month.
In 2012, during a trip to the ISS, Williams became the first person to finish a triathlon in space, during which she simulated swimming using a weight-lifting machine and ran on a treadmill while strapped in by a harness so she would not float away.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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