US Space Academy: Trump creates new space school

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday creating a US Space Academy to train future civilian and military recruits for space work.

Speaking at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Trump said the academy would be modeled on the US military academy at West Point and would serve the United States Space Force, NASA and the civilian spaceflight industry.

Trump did not say where the new academy would be built.

He also presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the crew of NASA's Artemis 2 mission, which flew past the moon in April.

The announcement comes as space has become a strategic field for major powers. The United States is competing with China in efforts to land astronauts on the Moon before 2030, and Trump last week pledged a “golden age” of space involving more rocket launches, including missions to Mars and the Moon.