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.

Posts by President Trump and Elon Musk roiled the space community, raising the prospect of an earlier-than-planned return for the Starliner crew.

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

Liftoff is scheduled for 8:34 p.m. ET tonight (Jan. 29).

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.”

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.

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.

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will conduct a spacewalk outside the International Space Station to swab the orbiting lab for evidence of microorganisms.

NASA’s two stuck astronauts took their first spacewalk together Thursday, exiting the International Space Station almost eight months after moving in. Commander Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore removed a broken antenna and wiped the station’s exterior for evidence of any microbes that might still be alive after launching from Earth and escaping through vents.

SpaceX on Wednesday night launched a Spanish communications satellite from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and retired the first-stage booster rather than landing on a drone.

Recent developments in science include NASA's collaboration with SpaceX to return astronauts, Boom Supersonic's XB-1 breaking the sound barrier, and groundbreaking discoveries like building blocks of life on asteroid Bennu.