In an attempt to clarify NASA administrator Charles Bolden’s controversial Muslim comments made during an interview with Al-Jazeera television last month, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Monday that Bolden had apparently misspoken when he mentioned that reaching out to the Muslim world was US space agency’s top priority.

During the interview, Bolden had said that before he assumed office as the NASA chief, US President Barack Obama had told him that one of his top priorities was to “find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.”

The Muslim comments made by Bolden raked a controversy last week - with conservatives pundits as well as ex-NASA officials widely criticizing the statement, saying that though Obama administration’s Muslim-nation outreach is laudable, it should not be among the top priorities for NASA.

In a last week clarification, NASA walked back Bolden’s controversial Muslims comments, and added that the remarks made by the agency’s chief merely referred to NASA’s “outreach” responsibilities.

Meanwhile, Gibbs clearly denied on Monday that Bolden was asked to focus on Muslim outreach at all; and said that making such commenets was “not his (Bolden’s) task and that’s not the task of NASA.”