President Donald Trump announced plans Friday to establish a new Space Academy, intended to train future aerospace experts for both military and civilian endeavors. The announcement came during a visit to the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Trump stated the new institution would be a "top line" school with rigorous admission standards and a "beautiful" campus, aiming to rival established military academies like West Point and Annapolis. He indicated that the academy would serve the U.S. Space Force, NASA, and the civilian spaceflight industry, supporting ambitions for a permanent lunar base and eventual Mars missions.
"We’re going to have an academy for what the people in this room love the most," Trump said at the event. "That’s exciting. That’s really exciting, and I’m going to be choosing a location very shortly."
During his visit, Trump also presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the four-person crew of the Artemis II mission, which recently completed a lunar flyby, setting a new distance record for a manned mission. He later communicated with the three American astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
In a conversation with astronaut Jack Hathaway, Trump expressed interest in his mustache, to which Hathaway responded that it was "great in microgravity." Hathaway also praised the president's Space Academy proposal, stating, "America’s leadership in the space program is incredible."
ISS commander Jessica Meir shared with Trump how the space station crew felt connected to the Artemis astronauts during their mission, highlighting a sense of national pride in the program's accomplishments.