Trump calls for creation of a “space academy” to train future NASA leaders

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 clear that we will need to educate and train an entire generation of skilled service members, engineers, and civil operators, and everything else to do what we have to do,” Trump said. “I will sign an executive order to begin the process of creating a new national 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.

Seeking to modernize NASA

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.

The academy idea remains in its formative stages but is likely to include curricula that covers human and non-human spaceflight operations, ground control operations, space vehicle design, orbital debris mitigation, and related disciplines. The goal is to create a new generation of technical leaders who can support ongoing exploration efforts, both in commercial spaceflight and in ensuring that the US government maintains a global lead in doing hard things in space.

This would be an entirely new academy, perhaps similar in design to the US Merchant Marine Academy, which is based in Kings Point, New York. Students would apply after high school for admittance and be taught by leaders in both civil space and commercial space. Students would earn a four-year degree. No location has been chosen for the academy, but it may be sited near existing NASA facilities or workforce expertise. “I’m going to be choosing a location very shortly,” Trump said during his remarks Friday.

Blurring lines between military and civil space?

A former deputy administrator of NASA, Lori Garver, said the idea of creating a space academy could be helpful for the US space program and its future workforce, but she cautioned that not enough is yet known about the details.

Her biggest concern is that creating an academy modeled after the military service academies would conflate what NASA does—the peaceful, civil exploration of space—with military activities undertaken by the US Space Force.

“NASA’s charter and legal foundation calls for a civilian agency separate from the military,” Garver said. “Structuring a feeder college along the lines of a military academy strikes me as ill-conceived.”

Garver served under President Obama at NASA about a decade ago. Since then, she has been involved in the creation of several fellowship programs to funnel more women and minorities into aerospace engineering. She said NASA has not historically had difficulty attracting young talent into the space program, even if there is not as much upside in pay as there can be in the private sector. Traditionally, NASA has had close ties to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, and other institutions that have long fed talent into the space agency.

Trump did not seek to dispel concerns along these lines during his remarks.

“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 Academy,” Trump said after announcing the Space Academy. “They’re all great, but we’re going to have now the Space Force.”