Trump honors Artemis II astronauts — but only after revealing what he wants to build next

President Donald Trump on Friday used an award ceremony meant to honor NASA’s Artemis II astronauts to tease creation of what he described as a “U.S. Space Academy” to be built at an as-yet unannounced site.

Trump signed what he said was an order to “begin the process of creating a new national academy” as he spoke at the Johnson Space Center and said the new institution would be “a big deal” and the equivalent of the four existing U.S. service academies which train Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard officers.

“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 a Space Force. We're going to have an academy for what the people in this room love the most,” he said, referencing his audience of NASA employees and astronauts. “It'll serve both the United States Space Force as well as NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry, and it'll attract, train, and graduate the very best of our nation, and our nation really has to offer.”

Currently, officers who will commission into the U.S. Space Force receive undergraduate education at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It’s unclear whether what Trump announced would be another military-run service academy or some other type of educational institution.

The president’s comments came moments before he awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the quartet of Artemis II who became the first humans to leave Low Earth Orbit since the Nixon administration when they circumnavigated the moon this past April. In what could have been an awkward geopolitical moment, the first of the four to whom Trump presented the medal was Jeremy Hansen, the Canadian astronaut who became the first non-American to travel to the moon.

Hansen politely stood at attention, a Canadian flag visible on his left sleeve, while Trump hung the medal around his neck.

Trump’s comments and his presentation of awards to the Artemis crew came after he arrived for his remarks nearly a half-hour late. He was already in Houston because he had flown there the previous day to fundraise for scandal-ridden GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton.

He brought up his new construction project twice more during a visit to NASA’s Mission Control center, telling workers there that he’d “just opened an academy” and shortly after suggesting that he’d be “picking a site very soon.”

Moments later, he told the American crew members aboard the International Space Station that he’d announced a “very special academy ... for what you people do” that would be “at the same level” as the existing military academies.

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