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.”

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.

NASA's two stuck astronauts are taking their first spacewalk together, exiting the International Space Station almost eight months after moving in