Stranded astronauts were not paid for overtime

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• Two US astronauts were supposed to stay on board the ISS for around a week - but a mishap turned this into nine months.
• They were not paid for this overtime.
• Just like other government employees on business trips, they received a salary for a 40-hour week, according to a Nasa spokesperson, and the costs for "transportation, accommodation and meals" were also covered by Nasa.

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The US astronauts who were stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) were not paid for the many hours of overtime. They were supposed to stay on board the ISS for around a week - which turned into nine months due to a glitch.

Just like other government employees on business trips, they would have received a salary for a 40-hour week and the costs for "transportation, accommodation and meals" would have been covered by NASA, a spokesperson for the US space agency told the German news agency DPA.

In addition, they each received five dollars per day in space for "incidentals". This is standard for all NASA astronauts.

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Suni Williams and Barry Wilmore arrived at the ISS at the beginning of June and were only supposed to stay there for around a week. However, due to technical problems with their "Starliner" spacecraft, NASA decided for safety reasons to send them back to Earth on another spacecraft and not until around nine months later. The experienced space travelers have been back on Earth since last week.

US President Donald Trump had repeatedly blamed his predecessor Joe Biden for the fact that the two had to stay in space longer than planned without providing any evidence. Trump recently commented to media representatives that he would "take care of it" when it came to paying them for their overtime. "If I have to, I'll pay it out of my own pocket."