During a visit to Johnson Space Center, President Trump on Friday signed an executive order to establish a new commission with the purpose of creating the first national space academy. It’s called the US Space Academy. That’s a big deal.” The proposed United States Space Academy would fall under the jurisdiction of NASA, and according to US space officials, is not intended be a traditional service academy in the sense that it educates and trains officers for the armed services, such as the Air Force Academy.
Trump signed the executive order as part of a ceremony in Houston during which he awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the four astronauts who flew on Artemis II earlier this year. This initiative is being spearheaded by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who included development of an “academy” to seed the future NASA workforce as part of his Project Athena plan to revamp US civil space efforts. The goal is to create a top-tier educational institution with free tuition and, in return, graduating students to fulfill a service commitment of several years.
Graduates will have the choice of going into the US Space Force, but the majority of slots will be allocated to NASA and civilian positions, according to people familiar with the project. Isaacman has been seeking to modernize NASA and help the space agency find its way at a time when the US commercial space industry is taking an increased role in the types of activities—launch, crewed spaceflight, space stations, lunar activities—that were once the sole province of the space agency. Isaacman has sought to increasingly lean on the commercial industry where it is excelling and focus NASA resources on cutting-edge initiatives, like developing a base on the surface of the Moon.
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