The News
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told Semafor’s Burgess Everett Friday that a Wall Street Journal report about calls between SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Russian President Vladimir Putin “should be investigated.”
“I don’t know if that story is true,” Nelson said. “If it’s true there have been multiple conversations with Elon Musk and the president of Russia, then that would be concerning, particularly for NASA and the Department of Defense,” he added.
SpaceX is a key commercial partner for NASA: On Friday, NASA’s Crew-8 mission members returned to Earth on a SpaceX capsule. Speaking at Semafor’s World Economy Summit in Washington, DC, Nelson stressed that the agency was nonpartisan and praised his dealings with SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell. The NASA head said that Musk largely leaves her to run the company, which he added has “been phenomenally successful.”
The Journal reported Thursday that Musk has been in regular contact with Putin since late 2022, citing former US, European, and Russian officials. The two men allegedly discussed both personal topics as well as others related to business and geopolitical tensions. Musk’s business ties with US intelligence and military agencies has given him “unique visibility into some of America’s most sensitive space programs,” the Journal wrote, and he has access to certain classified information.
Musk has not responded to the allegations, and the Kremlin said that the billionaire and Putin spoke only once and discussed “space as well as current and future technologies.”