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President Trump signed an executive order Friday to begin a process of creating a U.S. Space Academy for the use of the U.S. Space Force, NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry.
Mr. Trump announced the new academy at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston during an event awarding the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the four-person crew of Artemis II, which flew around the moon earlier this year, a flight that helps set the stage for a lunar landing in 2028.
“It’s called the U.S. Space Academy,” Mr. Trump told a throng of astronauts, engineers and NASA managers. “That’s a big deal. So you think of West Point, and you think of Annapolis, and you think of the Air Force Academy, and you think of the Coast Guard academies. Great, they’re all great. But we’re going to have now the Space Force. We’re going to have an academy for what the people in this room love the most.”
The president said the academy will “attract, train and graduate the very best of our nation.” He said he agreed to build the academy, but “it’s got to be top line. It’s got to be the equivalent of the others, which are great.”
The Trump administration hasn’t yet chosen a location for the academy, but Mr. Trump said Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is lobbying for Texas.
“I’m going to be choosing a location very shortly,” Mr. Trump said. “I know where some people want it that are in this audience. Some people come down at this one guy over there. He’s lobbying me. Say, ‘Leave me alone, just leave me alone.’ I’m not sure he’s going to get it. I don’t know if he’s going to get it. But everybody wants it because it’s the hot thing. Space is the hot thing.”
“Just leave me alone, Ted, please, leave me alone,” he joked.
It’s not clear what kind of access the civilian spaceflight industry will have to the federal academy.
Trump awards medals to Artemis II astronauts
Mr. Trump addressed spaceflight personnel in a large hangar-like building where a full-scale space station mockup is used for training and where he presented Congressional Space Medals of Honor to Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
“We are going to wear them with pride,” Wiseman told the president. “But please know, it is not pride for ourselves that we feel, and I truly mean that.
“It is pride for the grit that our families had when we left this planet. It is pride for this NASA team that sent us on this mission. And it is pride for the international community that stood alongside us, got this vehicle ready, operated it, and cheered us on. So thank you for bestowing this honor on us.”
The Congressional Space Medal of Honor was established in 1969 with Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the moon, among the first recipients.
With the addition of the Artemis II crew, 34 astronauts have now been so honored, including three of the original Mercury program astronauts — Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom and John Glenn — and 14 who lost their lives in the Challenger and Columbia shuttle disasters.
Hansen is the second foreign national to receive the space medal after Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, who was a member of Columbia’s final crew. Despite an escalating war of words in the ongoing U.S.-Canada trade dispute, Mr. Trump was gracious when pinning the space medal on Hansen.
Before handing out the medals, the president took credit for NASA’s recent successes, saying that when he was elected to his first term, “America’s endeavors in space had come to a complete halt.”
He went on to say, “NASA was closed, absolutely closed. There was almost nobody there.” He said America was “number three,” presumably meaning the U.S. space program trailed Russia and China.
“Not only had the United States lost its ability to send our astronauts to the moon, but under a number of administrations, in particular the Obama administration, we even lost our ability to send astronauts into orbit at all. We had no ability in space whatsoever.”
He did not mention the second Bush administration’s decision to cancel the shuttle program in 2010 (later 2011) or the establishment of NASA’s commercial crew and cargo programs, which began under President Barack Obama and, while taking longer than expected, resulted in the development of the SpaceX Crew Dragon ferry ship and Boeing’s Starliner capsule.
And the International Space Station, one of the most complex engineering projects in history, has been continuously staffed by astronauts and cosmonauts across every presidential administration since 2000.
NASA 
Mr. Trump highlighted his efforts to stand up the U.S. Space Force and his drive to send Artemis astronauts back to the lunar surface followed by construction of a base near the moon’s south pole.
“As the world can see today,” the president went on, “under the Trump administration, we have brought back America’s space program and came out of the dark age, and it’s now into the golden age.”
After the awards ceremony, the president made his way to NASA’s nearby mission control center, where he spoke with the three NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station — Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway and Anil Menon.
Also on board: European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonauts Andrey Fedyaev, Anna Kikina and Pyotr Dubrov.
Mr. Trump said it was “a great honor to be with you,” and joked: “I wouldn’t do it [fly in space]. I will tell you right now, I hate to admit it, I would not want to do it.” He told them about setting up the Space Academy and asked, “Are you feeling well all the way up there?”
“Well, first of all, that is very exciting news,” said Meir of the Space Academy announcement. “We are thrilled to hear it. … We want to welcome you on board the International Space Station. We and all of our colleagues are very thrilled to have you up here today. We’re all doing very well.”
He promised the crew an Oval Office visit after they return to Earth next month.
Mr. Trump is the sixth sitting president to chat with astronauts in space and the third to do so from mission control. Ronald Reagan was the first, speaking with the crew of the second space shuttle mission in 1981, and Bill Clinton was the second, chatting with another shuttle crew in 1994.
Richard Nixon was the first president to speak with a crew in space when he called Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from the White House in July 1969 while the astronauts were walking on the moon. George Bush and Barack Obama also spoke with astronauts in space in calls originating from the Oval Office.
