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NASA chief asks SpaceX president if Elon Musk is too distracted with Twitter

Elon Musk looks at his phone with a display of a space capsule entering orbit behind him.
Steve Nesius/Reuters
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Even NASA has expressed concern over Elon Musk's chaotic Twitter takeover. 

NASA administrator Bill Nelson said on Sunday that he had asked SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell whether Musk's Twitter acquisition would impact SpaceX or the commitments the company has made to NASA.

"Tell me that the distraction that Elon might have on Twitter is not going to affect SpaceX," Nelson said he asked Shotwell earlier in December, per NBC.

Nelson said that the SpaceX president assured him he has "nothing to worry about," NBC reported.

"I hugged her with a smile on my face, because I know she is running that thing," Nelson said, per NBC. "She's running SpaceX." 

A spokesperson for SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment from Insider ahead of publication.

SpaceX is working with NASA on its Artemis program, which aims to put boots back on the moon by the end of 2025. The agency has given Musk's company billions of dollars in funding. 

The NASA administrator is not the first to express concern in Musk's preoccupation with Twitter. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Tesla investors were concerned that the billionaire had "abandoned" the electric-car maker in favor of the social media company.

Over the past few months, Musk has spent much of his time at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco — even sleeping in the office. The Tesla CEO has also reportedly brought in engineers from his other companies to help out with Twitter. 

"I continue to oversee both Tesla & SpaceX, but the teams there are so good that often little is needed from me," Musk tweeted on Thursday.

Musk's current focus on Twitter can be seen via his tweets, which have been heavily focused on product updates, the release of the so-called "Twitter files," and calls to fight "the woke mind virus."

Last month, the billionaire said he's looking for someone else to run Twitter and plans to eventually reduce his time at the company. S

Do you work for SpaceX or one of Musk's companies? Reach out to the reporter from a non-work email at gkay@insider.com

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Grace Kay
Grace Kay was a Correspondent on Business Insider’s enterprise desk, where she covered the inner workings of Tesla, Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, and the broader robotics and electric vehicle industries.Her stories have been cited by multiple publications, including Reuters, Bloomberg, and CNBC. Before joining Business Insider, she worked at Bloomberg and Forbes.Tesla: Inside 'Project Rodeo,' the Tesla effort pushing the limits of self-driving technologyInternal Tesla salary database shows Elon Musk's strategy: Lower salaries, bigger stock grantsTesla tells staff it plans to roll out its Robotaxi service in San Francisco this weekendTesla has been working on modified Model Ys for its Robotaxi programTesla prioritizes Musk's and other 'VIP' drivers' data to train self-driving softwareAshok Elluswamy is the most powerful Tesla executive you've never heard ofxAI:Internal documents reveal how Elon Musk's xAI trains Grok to be the anti-woke chatbotXAI's Macrohard project stalls as Tesla ramps up a similar AI agent effortElon Musk's xAI plans to supply computing power to coding startup CursorWar rooms, group chats, and video games: Inside Elon Musk's AI startupBehind Grok's 'sexy' settings, workers review explicit and disturbing contentElon Musk's xAI lays off hundreds of workers tasked with training GrokEVs and robots:Fisker employees are fixing some customers' cars with parts from the company's vehicle 'graveyard,' sources sayFisker Ocean reservation cancellations top 40,000 as the EV company tries to fight off bankruptcy, leaked data showsInside the downfall of Henrik Fisker's second automotive startup, which just filed for bankruptcyInside the glass-walled Tesla lab where workers train the Optimus robot to act like a humanInside OpenAI's renewed push into robotics