Trump signs order creating new Space Academy akin to West Point, location to be determined
President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order to establish the U.S. Space Academy.
Trump said the location of the academy was yet to be determined, but compared its significance to that of the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., and the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn.
The U.S. Space Academy will be for students looking to enter the U.S. Space Force, a new branch of the military Trump created in his first term. Trump said it will also serve NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry.
“We’re going to have an academy for what the people in this room love the most. That’s exciting. That’s really exciting. And I’m going to be choosing a location very shortly,” Trump said during remarks at NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
The other purpose of the event was to award the four Artemis II astronauts with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. Behind Trump stood more than a dozen astronauts throughout the ceremony.
After signing the executive order, Trump presented the vaunted award, which was first given to Neil Armstrong in 1978, to all four members of the Artemis II crew.
The crew consists of NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, the mission commander; NASA astronaut Victor Glover, the pilot; NASA astronaut Christina Koch, a mission specialist; and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, also a mission specialist.
“We gather here on these storied grounds to celebrate the immense courage and service of four intrepid space heroes whose sense of daring and adventure led them further from Earth and anyone has ever traveled before. Incredible,” Trump said.
Trump called the crew members “great people,” also thanking the engineers and scientists who worked on the Artemis II mission.
“Mr. President, it means a lot that you are here at the Johnson Space Center. It underscores the important work that is going on here in Mission Control, in furthering human exploration,” Wiseman said when he was called up to speak. “Thank you for coming here today.”
The four Artemis II astronauts launched aboard the Orion spacecraft on April 1, 2026, and spent nearly 10 days traveling around the Moon before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10. Their trajectory took them as far as 252,756 miles from Earth, farther than any humans had traveled before.
Unlike past missions to the Moon, the Artemis II team did not touch down on the lunar surface. Their mission was to fly around the Moon while testing the spacecraft and systems NASA plans to use for future lunar landings.
NASA says the mission served as a stepping stone for Artemis III, which is scheduled for 2027 and will involve a series of challenging tests in Earth orbit. Artemis IV, slated for early 2028, is then expected to send astronauts to the lunar South Pole for the first time.
The Artemis program’s overall goal is to establish a long-term human presence on the Moon and eventually send astronauts to Mars.
“America has always been a frontier nation, and space is the highest of all the frontiers. Our manifest destiny is to explore and settle this great unknown,” Trump said. “Americans were the first in flight, the first to the Moon, and will certainly be the first in space, no matter where it is. And I know we’re going to be looking at Mars very shortly.”
Trump also revealed NASA has begun to work on the first ever nuclear-powered “interplanetary spacecraft” that the space agency will use for the planned 2028 mission to Mars.
“They have to go nuclear because they have essentially unlimited fuel. You don’t have to fill up the tanks,” he said. “This ship will be among the first of what will ultimately be a massive American Star fleet, making space travel almost as common as ocean travel today, and bringing our military to a new level of excellence.”
Throughout his speech, Trump blamed his predecessors for letting U.S. space programs languish.
“In particular, the Obama administration, we even lost our ability to send astronauts into orbit at all. We had no ability in space whatsoever. We totally lost it with everything we spent, with all of the talent and all of the genius and all of the money, we had nothing,” the president said.
“Before the end of my term, American astronauts will return to the lunar surface,” he said. “And when we do, they’ll plant this very important flag to mark the site of the first permanent American settlement on the Moon.”
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