Donald Trump jokes on NASA astronauts ‘left in space’, calls Sunita Williams a ‘woman with wild hair’

US President Donald Trump cracked a joke when asked about his message to NASA's "astronauts stuck in space". While hitting out at the Biden administration, Trump replied, "We love you and we're coming up to get you and you shouldn't have been up there so long."

Trump went on to comment on NASA astronaut Sunita Williams' hair, saying, “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.”

On bringing back the two Starliner astronauts, Trump said, “They have been left up there.  I hope they like each other, maybe they'll love each other. I don't know. But they've been left up there. Think of it."

The US president made the remarks at the Oval Office on Thursday. He blamed the Biden administration for "leaving" the two Starliner astronauts — Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore — in space.

Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who launched aboard Boeing's Starliner spacecraft last June, have been spending more time in space than earlier scheduled. They were supposed to return to Earth in eight days. However, their mission got extended by months due to faults in the Starliner.

Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore said earlier that they would return on SpaceX Dragon on March 19.

'Elon preparing Starship'

Trump said on Thursday SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is “right now preparing a ship to go up” and get them. He said Musk is preparing starship to bring back the astronauts.

“So I've authorised Elon. A week ago, I said, we have two people up there that (Joe) 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," Trump said.

“Should I go on that journey just to be on the ship,” Trump said amid laughter from the reporters present in the Oval Office.

Starship ‘explodes’

Trump's statement came on the day Elon Musk's SpaceX lost the upper stage of its massive Starship rocket in a fiery explosion. However, the booster was successfully caught in its orbital test.

Minutes after liftoff and booster separation, a live video feed showed the upper stage tumbling uncontrollably before the signal abruptly cut.

Dramatic footage circulating online showed red-hot debris raining down over the Bahamas.

"Can confirm we did lose contact with the ship. Unfortunately, this happened last time, too," SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said, referring to January's flight, which also ended with the upper stage disintegrating over the Caribbean.

It marked its eighth uncrewed orbital test, after launch attempts were scrubbed on Monday and Wednesday. Starship — the world's largest and most powerful rocket — lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, shortly after 5:30 pm (2330 GMT).

(With inputs from agencies)