President Trump on Tuesday announced that he has asked SpaceX founder Elon Musk to “go get” two NASA astronauts who have been aboard the International Space Station since June awaiting a return trip to Earth.

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

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

Several other space companies have plans to construct their own space stations as well, including Northrop Grumman, Axiom Space, Nanoracks and Sierra Space. NASA needs at least one of them on orbit before the ISS is decommissioned, and all of them are counting on market demand to make it there.

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.

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.

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.

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

SpaceX sent up the Space Coast’s 10th launch of the year Wednesday night, but skipped any landing attempt of its booster. A Falcon 9 rocket on the SpainSat NG I mission carrying a communications satellite developed by Spanish company Hisdesat and the European Space Agency lifted off at 8:34 p.

NASA affirmed on Wednesday a plan it set last year to work with Elon Musk's SpaceX in returning two astronauts from the International Space Station, saying it will do so "as soon as practical," the day after President Donald Trump suggested he wants a quicker return for the crew.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said President Trump has asked the company to bring home the two NASA astronauts from Boeing’s Starliner mission on board the ISS “as soon as possible.”