President Donald Trump on Friday said he was unaware that NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore had not received overtime pay for their unexpectedly extended stay at the International Space Station (ISS). Donald Trump hinted that he might cover the overtime costs for the astronauts, who recently returned from space after staying on the ISS for nine months.
During a press briefing at the White House, Fox News’ Peter Doocy informed Donald Trump that the astronauts hadn’t received overtime pay for their extended stay at the space station, despite being entitled to $5 per day—totalling $1,430 for 286 days, The Hill reported.
“Nobody ever mentioned this to me. If I have to, I will pay it out of my own pocket? OK, I will get it for them,” Trump said.
“Is that all? That’s not a lot. For what they had to go through,” the US president added.
Trump then thanked SpaceX’s Elon Musk for returning the astronauts – Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore, Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. They returned to Earth early on Wednesday onboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, which splashed down in the sea off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida.
Watch the video here:
REPORTER: “The two astronauts that you just helped save from space, they didn’t get any overtime pay…”
TRUMP: “If I have to, I’ll pay it out of my own pocket… and I want to thank Elon by the way because think if we don’t have him.”
pic.twitter.com/Ev5LWkQacB— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 21, 2025
For Williams and Wilmore, test pilots for Boeing’s new Starliner capsule, an eight-day mission stretched to more than nine months as a series of helium leaks and thruster failures deemed their spacecraft unsafe. The spacecraft returned without them in September last year.
“Think of, if we don’t have him (Musk). You know, there’s only so long — even though they are in the capsule up there — the body starts to deteriorate after nine or 10 months,” Trump said at the briefing.
