Earlier this week, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who had been aboard the International Space Station since June 2024, safely returned to earth with help from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Despite being stranded by the Biden Administration for nine months instead of the 8 days they were supposed to stay, the two astronauts will not get overtime pay, something that President Trump made clear on Friday in remarks to the press.
Despite being stuck in space for 278 days longer than originally expected, Wilmore and Williams did not receive overtime pay, a NASA spokesperson told Newsweek.
Standard procedure is that astronauts receive regular, 40-hour workweek salaries when they’re aboard the ISS. This does not include any overtime or holiday pay.
But astronauts do receive incidental pay of $5 for each day they spend in space. Since Wilmore and Williams spent 286 days in space, this amounts to $1,430 in incidental pay for each astronaut.
On Friday, during remarks to reporters, President Trump was asked about the issue of overtime for the stranded duo.
A reporter asked, “The two astronauts that you just helped save from space, they didn’t get any overtime pay for all that extra time. They get $5 a day per diem for 286 days.”
“That is $1430 in extra pay. Is there anything the administration can do to get them…to make them whole?”
President Trump responded, “Well, nobody’s ever mentioned this to me. If I have to, I’ll pay it out of my own pocket.”
“Ok? I’ll get it for them.”
President Trump also took the opportunity to thank Elon Musk for his work to rescue Wilmore and Williams.
“I want to thank Elon Musk, by the way, because, think if we don’t have him. You know there’s only so long, even though they’re in the capsule up there…the body starts to deteriorate after nine or ten months. And it gets really bad after 14, 15 months with the bones and the blood and all of the things you have been reporting on really well.”
“And if we don’t have Elon, they could be up there a long time. Who else is going to get them? And I just want to thank him.”
Watch:
REPORTER: The two astronauts that you just helped save from space, they didn’t get any overtime pay…@POTUS: “If I have to, I’ll pay it out of my own pocket… and I want to thank @elonmusk by the way because think if we don’t have him.” pic.twitter.com/b86RanXggp
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 21, 2025
Elon Musk recently sat down with Sean Hannity and confirmed that he could have returned the stranded astronauts before today and that SpaceX made the offer to the Biden administration but was turned down for reasons which were political.
Musk told Hannity, “We definitely offered to return the astronauts earlier, there’s no question about that. The astronauts were only supposed to be there for eight days and they’ve been there for ten months. So obviously that doesn’t make sense, SpaceX could have brought the astronauts back after a few months at most and we made that offer to the Biden administration. It was rejected for political reasons and that’s just a fact.”
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