A presidential commission now has 120 days to design the United States Space Academy, a proposed federal school for astronauts, engineers and Space Force officers that the White House says NASA would lead. Houston is positioning itself to host the campus, even as budget analysts question the price tag and Latino advocates ask whether the school will touch NASA's long-standing hiring gap.
On August 28, President Trump signed an order forming a commission tasked with mapping out a new federal school called the United States Space Academy, according to a White House fact sheet on the order. The order itself does not open a school; it appoints a group of senior officials who must hand Trump a design within four months.
The signing happened at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where Trump also awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the four-person Artemis II crew who circled the moon earlier this year, as NASA's own account of the ceremony lays out.
A Commission First, a Campus Later
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will chair the panel, with Office of Science and Technology Policy chief Michael Kratsios and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett serving as vice chairs and NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson running its daily work, per the fact sheet. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink and several other cabinet-level officials round out the roster, according to Al Jazeera's coverage of the event.
The panel's job is to settle what Trump left open: how the school would admit students, what they would study, whether graduates would owe the government service afterward, and where the campus would eventually sit. Isaacman said in a statement he expects future contributors to lunar landings and a planned Moon Base to come through the academy's classrooms. Onstage in Houston, Trump held the concept up against the country's existing service schools, telling the crowd he wanted it to match the standard set by West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy and the Coast Guard Academy, according to a CBS News transcript of his remarks.
Houston's Pitch, and a Public Ted Cruz Joke
No site has been chosen, and that vacancy has already turned into a contest among the nation's aerospace hubs. Houston's case is straightforward: Johnson Space Center already sits there, and it hosted Friday's announcement. The school is also likely to draw interest from Colorado Springs, home to U.S. Space Command; the Cape Canaveral launch corridor in Florida; and Huntsville, Alabama, NASA's longtime rocketry hub, with one space-policy academic telling the outlet Huntsville counts as a serious contender given plans to relocate Space Force headquarters there.
Trump made clear from the podium that Texas already has an advocate working the room: he singled out Sen. Ted Cruz for lobbying him on the site, joking, "Just leave me alone, Ted, please leave me alone," per CBS News's coverage of the speech. For a metro area whose economy leans heavily on space and energy work, and whose Latino labor force fills much of that industry, the eventual site decision carries direct local stakes.
A Price Tag Nobody Has Signed Off On
The enthusiasm hasn't quieted a harder set of questions about money and legal footing. Existing service academies run on operating budgets of roughly a billion dollars a year each, a figure corroborated independently by both a BryceTech analyst and separate SpaceNews reporting on the order. That analyst, Phil Smith, told the Houston Chronicle he doesn't "see a need for such a dedicated institution," arguing established universities already run strong space-focused programs.
Todd Harrison, who studies defense budgets as a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, called the order "out of left field" in comments to Defense One, warning that combining NASA, Space Force units and the government's intelligence-space agencies under one roof could blur roles that are currently well defined. Notably, Trump's own budget requests have twice tried to eliminate NASA's Office of STEM Engagement, the agency's existing education arm, proposals Congress rejected both times, according to SpaceNews' reporting on the pattern. Congress, not the White House, will ultimately decide whether the academy gets built and funded.
A Test for NASA's Latino Pipeline
The debate arrives as NASA's own numbers show a gap with the country it serves. Latinos make up close to a fifth of the U.S. population, but a 2023 analysis by Latin Times found that Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data put NASA's Hispanic and Latino workforce share at only 5.7%, a figure that predates the agency's more recent decision to stop publishing much of its diversity data. That earlier reporting was tied to a prior White House push to close the gap.
NASA has since ended its formal diversity, equity and inclusion programming altogether. Acting Administrator Janet Petro ordered the shutdown in January 2025 to comply with a Trump executive order, and Inc. reported at the time that a NASA inspector general review had already found little movement in the agency's workforce demographics over the prior decade despite years of diversity initiatives. Whether the new academy's eventual admissions rules touch that imbalance is one more question left for the commission.
What Happens Next
For now, what exists is a commission, a countdown clock, and a growing list of cities making their pitch. The panel's recommendations on governance, coursework, service obligations and a permanent home are due on Trump's desk by around December 26, 2026, 120 days after the order was signed, though turning any of it into reality still depends on money Congress hasn't committed and legislation it hasn't written.
