Washington, Aug 29 (IANS) President Donald Trump has said the United States must train an entire generation of space professionals for missions to the Moon and beyond as he ordered a commission to design the country’s first Space Academy.
“Given the rapid growth of the US Space Force and commercial space industry, and the expansion of our ambitions to the Moon and far beyond the Moon, it’s clear we will need to educate and train an entire generation of skilled service members, engineers, and civil operators,” Trump said in a speech at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“That’s why I will sign an Executive Order to begin the process of creating a new a national academy called the US Space Academy,” he said.
Trump signed the order during a ceremony at which he presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the four members of the Artemis II crew.
The order creates a Presidential Commission on the United States Space Academy. The proposed NASA-led federal institution would combine technical education with leadership training, discipline and public service.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will chair the commission. NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson will serve as its executive director.
The panel has 120 days to recommend a governance structure, curriculum, admission requirements, graduate service obligations and a permanent location. It will also address pilot programmes, partnerships, legislation and implementation.
Trump said the institution must rank alongside America’s established service academies.
“And whether it’s West Point, Annapolis, the Coast Guard Academy, if you look at the Air Force Academy, we’re going to have an academy for what you people do, everybody in this room would be excited, and it’ll be at the same level,” he said during a call with astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
“I said, it has to be at the same level. If we’re going to do it, it has to be at that very high level. Those are among the hardest schools to get into in the whole country. I would say almost at the top, and that’s what we want,” Trump said.
The president also singled out NASA astronaut Anil Menon, the son of Indian and Ukrainian immigrants, along with Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway. He described them as “great Americans, great patriots, brave people”.
Menon, who is serving aboard the station and is a colonel in the US Space Force, welcomed the plan.
“Thank you, sir. And I would like to say, as a colonel in the Space Force, that I am very proud to serve in the largest domain imaginable,” Menon said.
“And last week, I got the great honor of doing a spacewalk and got to look at the space station from the robotic arm and saw the incredible ingenuity that we are capable of,” he said.
Menon said he was excited that the United States would “pave the way to our next journey to the Moon, Moon Base and Mars”. Trump invited the crew to visit the Oval Office after returning to Earth.
At the Houston ceremony, Trump honoured NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Their Artemis II mission launched on April 1 and splashed down on April 10 after a lunar flyby.
The crew travelled 252,756 miles from Earth, farther than any humans before them, and covered 695,081 miles in total, according to NASA. They were the first recipients of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor since 2023.
Trump established the US Space Force in December 2019 as the sixth branch of the armed services. The new academy, however, is envisaged as a NASA-led federal institution serving military, civil and commercial space needs.
The United States currently operates five federal service academies. Establishing another permanent academy would require decisions on funding, admissions, degree programmes, service commitments and, where necessary, congressional action.
–IANS
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