Jokowi and several of his top ministers arrived in Washington, DC, on Tuesday evening local time ahead of the US-ASEAN Special Summit on Thursday and Friday.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah confirmed the meeting with Musk as one of the few appointments with CEOs that the President had lined up during his stay.

“We have received confirmation that the President has been scheduled to visit Texas where the SpaceX facility is located,” Faizasyah said at a press briefing on Thursday.

He did not elaborate on any further details or the other meetings the President would be having.

On Monday, Coordinating Maritime Affairs and Investment Minister Luhut Pandjaitan announced that the President was looking forward to meeting the CEO during his visit, while representatives of Musk’s own electric vehicle (EV) maker Tesla Inc were in Indonesia to visit a nickel production hub in Morowali, Central Sulawesi.

Luhut, who is part of the President’s current entourage, had already met with Musk last month to set up the appointment with the new majority shareholder of Twitter, in hopes of accelerating the development of the nation’s nickel industry to supply batteries for electric vehicles.

But the meeting looks likely to also serve as a lynchpin for Indonesia’s ambition to join the space race.

The government had been planning to build a spaceport on Biak island in Papua, the archipelago’s most easterly region, with the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) saying in 2019 that the regency’s square footage was much more ideal for testing large rocket launches compared with its current site in West Java.

Government officials have been approaching Musk in the hope that he would invest in Indonesia’s EV industry, while the idea to scout a potential site for a new SpaceX rocket launch site in Indonesia was discussed in a telephone call between Jokowi and Musk in 2020.

The plan itself is not without its detractors, as indigenous groups in Biak have expressed concern that they would be forced out of their ancestral homeland to make way for the spaceport.

Tesla Inc could not be reached for comment.

Jokowi has also sought to invite Musk to attend the Group of 20 (G20) series of meetings in Bali later this year, the latest object of his unbridled fascination with young tech leaders.

Aside from meeting with Musk and other US business leaders, the President is also slated to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris and the US national climate task force, as well as members of the US Congress.

He will then join other Southeast Asian leaders at the US-ASEAN summit, which will be hosted by US President Joe Biden. They hope to discuss cooperation in the pandemic response and global health security, climate change, sustainable and human capital development, economic engagements as well as discussing regional and global issues of common concern.

Biden himself is preparing to debut the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), a scaled-back version of a free trade deal that is widely considered to be a response to China’s strong economic presence in ASEAN and the wider region.

The Foreign Ministry’s Asia Pacific and African Cooperation Director General Abdul Kadir Jailani noted that IPEF was not a conventional legally binding trade deal and said that Indonesia would support cooperation “within the framework of the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific”.

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