President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order establishing a Presidential Commission to design the United States Space Academy, a proposed NASA-led federal academy meant to prepare the next generation of Americans for careers across the military, civil, and commercial space enterprise.
Trump created the Space Force during his first term, the first new armed service in more than 70 years. The academy is intended to train not only Space Force officers but also engineers, operators, civil servants, and others needed as the Space Force, the commercial launch industry, and lunar and deep-space ambitions expand.
“Given 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 will need to educate and train an entire generation of skilled service members, engineers and civil operators,” he said at Johnson Space Center, where he also awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the Artemis II astronauts. “That’s a big deal,” he added, likening the planned school to West Point, Annapolis, and the other service academies.
The order creates the Presidential Commission on the United States Space Academy, chaired by the NASA administrator, with the White House science and economic policy advisers as vice chairs and NASA’s deputy administrator as executive director. Other members include the secretaries of War and the Air Force, the OMB director, the national security adviser, and the White House chief of staff.
Within 120 days the commission must deliver recommendations on governance (including whether to house the academy inside NASA), degree programs and leadership training, graduate service obligations in the armed forces or civilian federal service, applicant requirements such as citizenship and security clearances, a process for choosing a permanent campus, pilot programs and partnerships that can start under existing law, and the legislation needed to stand the school up. After presidential approval and any required congressional action, NASA would implement the plan in coordination with other agencies.
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Christina Botteri is the Executive Editor of The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow her on X at @christinakb.
