Trump signs order creating U.S. Space Academy

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday to begin creating a U.S. Space Academy, a new military academy intended to train people for the Space Force, NASA and the commercial spaceflight industry.

Trump announced the plan at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where he also awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission. NBC News reported that the crew flew around the moon earlier this year.

“It’s called the U.S. Space Academy,” Trump said. “That’s a big deal. So you think of West Point, and you think of Annapolis, and you think of the Air Force Academy, and you think of the Coast Guard academies. Great, they’re all great. But we’re going to have now the Space Force. We’re going to have an academy for what the people in this room love the most.”

Trump said the academy would help meet the needs created by “the rapid growth of the Space Force and the commercial space industry and the expansion of our ambitions to the moon and far beyond the moon.”

“It’s clear that we need to educate and train an entire generation of skilled service members, engineers, civil operators, and everything else to do what we have to do,” he said.

The president offered few details about how the academy would operate. He said it would “attract, train and graduate the very best of our nation” and would educate civilians for jobs at NASA and in the commercial spaceflight industry, along with service members in the U.S. Space Force. CBS News reported that it is not clear what kind of access the civilian spaceflight industry would have to the federal academy.

Trump created the Space Force in 2019. On Friday, he said he agreed to build the academy only if it would be “top of the line.”

The administration has not selected a location. Trump told the audience he would make that choice “very shortly,” and said Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was lobbying for the academy to be located in Texas.

“I know where some people want it that are in this audience,” Trump said. “Some people come down at this one guy over there. He’s lobbying me. Say, ‘Leave me alone, just leave me alone.’ I’m not sure he’s going to get it. I don’t know if he’s going to get it. But everybody wants it because it’s the hot thing. Space is the hot thing.”

“Just leave me alone, Ted, please, leave me alone,” Trump joked.

The event also included the Artemis II crew presenting Trump with a NASA flight jacket, according to NBC News. Trump expressed optimism about the future of U.S. space exploration, saying, “Far beyond the moon will someday be thought of a close location, like, like in the old days, the subway, the first stop, the moon will be a close location.”

NBC News reported that Trump also planned later Friday to become the first president to call astronauts on the International Space Station from Mission Control at Johnson Space Center.