NASA chief says reported calls between Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin would be ‘concerning’

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that reported calls between SpaceX chief Elon Musk and Russian President Vladimir Putin would be “concerning” to the agency.

Speaking recently at Semafor's World Economy Summit, the former Florida senator said a Wall Street Journal report describing years of communication should be investigated. SpaceX and NASA have a long working relationship and are together planning future exploration missions.

“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. Nelson has also called for an investigation into the report

A SpaceX spokesperson told The Independent last week that claims in the Journal were “misleading” and “unsubstantiated.”

Nelson, who stressed that NASA is nonpartisan, also praised dealings with SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell. Shotwell has been with the commercial spaceflight leaders since the early 2000s.

NASA is relying on SpaceX to provide the spacecraft for its upcoming Artemis moon exploration campaign. In 2021, the company was selected to provide the system to transport astronauts from an Orion space capsule to the Earth’s moon and back.

The vehicle, SpaceX’s Starship, is still undergoing testing. Recently, the rocket successfully blasted off from a SpaceX site in southern Texas, and mechanical arms caught the rocket’s booster as it returned to Earth. Although it was one second away from disaster.

Musk said over the weekend that Starships will be sent to Mars in as little as two years: another future exploration goal for NASA.

Nelson’s comments come after years of working to maintain a relationship with the Russian space agency Roscosmos. The program’s former head had threatened cooperation with the US, and Russia’s assault on Ukraine further heightened simmering tensions.

Last year, Nelson said that he sees the Russians and Americans working together on the International Space Station until it is decommissioned in 2030. Roscosmos announced in July that it is aiming to create the core of its new planned space station by that year. Right now, Russia and NASA are monitoring an ongoing leak on the current orbiting laboratory, that has been continuously crewed since 2000.

Russia was one of the 15 governments that signed the International Space Station Intergovernmental Agreement in 1998: the framework for cooperation. But, the country is absent from the recent international Artemis Accords. Comprised of 47 nations, the accords provide new guidance to enhance the governance of the exploration and use of outer space. The US has signed on to the accord.

Earlier this year, however, Russia and China reaffirmed their partnership in space and announced a potential plan to build an automated nuclear power plant on the moon between 2033 and 2035. That’s something NASA is considering, as well. US officials have said Russia is developing a nuclear weapon that could be used in Earth orbit to destroy satellites and take down key US national security infrastructure for missile warnings – something Russia denies and would be a violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

Nelson said earlier this year that the US is in a space race with China, but that NASA is on track to return astronauts to the lunar surface before China: a timeline that has been pushed before because of technical challenges.

China is launching Chinese astronauts to its Tiangong Space Station this week, and Russia and Japan are launching military payloads. SpaceX launched more satellites for its Starlink constellation. Starlink has several global partners, but they don’t include Russia or China.

The Journal said Putin had reportedly asked Musk for “a favor” on behalf of Chinese leader Xi Jinping not to activate Starlink services over Taiwan.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed one telephone call took place between Musk and Putin where they discussed “space as well as current and future technologies,” the outlet said. However, he denied that there had been regular conversations between the men.