The United States Space Force will have its own Space Academy, with President Donald Trump announcing plans for the new military college on Friday at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
“We’re going to have an academy for what the people in this room love the most,” Trump told the crowd in Houston.
Trump signed an executive order to begin creating the academy during a ceremony awarding the Artemis II flight crew with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. The president was joined onstage by astronauts based at the center and the Artemis II crew, whom Trump called “very special people.”
“Great people, great men and women,” Trump said of the crew. “Incredible.”
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Although details were scarce, Trump said the academy would be analogous to the United States Military Academy, which trains officers for the United States Army, or the Air Force Academy.
“It’s clear that we will need to educate and train an entire generation of skilled service members, engineers, and civil operators, and everything else to do what we have to do — and what we’re right now doing the best,” Trump said.
The academy would serve the United States Space Force, as well as NASA and the private spaceflight industry, according to the president.
The Space Force directed questions about the academy to the White House and NASA. Neither immediately responded to requests for comment.
The executive order established a “presidential commission on the United States Space Academy.” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will lead the commission. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought will join him.
Within three months, the commission must submit details of the academy to Trump, including a framework of admissions and operations, whether to establish the academy within NASA and potential curriculum options.
Trump discussed constructing a new campus for the academy and added that he will choose the academy’s location “very shortly.”
An active Space Academy already exists on a NASA campus. The U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama — where Trump moved U.S. Space Command headquarters last year — hosts weeklong space camps for teenage space-lovers during the summer.
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