President Trump on Friday signed an executive order to start building a U.S. Space Academy, a new school modeled on West Point and the other top U.S. military service academies.
He announced it at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston while awarding the Artemis II crew the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. “It’s called the U.S. Space Academy. That’s a big deal,” Trump said.
The academy is meant to train service members, engineers, and civilian operators as the U.S. Space Force and the commercial space industry grow, and as Washington pushes farther onto the moon and beyond. “A nation cannot be first on Earth if we’re going to be second in space. Just not going to happen,” he said.
Trump also said NASA has begun work on the first nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft, expected to launch on a Mars mission in 2028. He said that vessel could be the first in a larger American fleet built to make space travel more routine.
