President Donald J. Trump signed an order titled “Establishing the United States Space Academy” on Aug. 28, 2026, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the same day he awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the four Artemis II astronauts.

The text published on whitehouse.gov does not open a campus. It establishes the Presidential Commission on the United States Space Academy. The NASA Administrator chairs the commission. The Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy serve as vice chairs. The NASA Deputy Administrator is executive director. Other members include the Secretary of War, the White House chief of staff, the OMB director, the national security adviser, and the Secretary of the Air Force, or their designees.

Within 120 days, the commission must report on a governance framework, curriculum, graduate service obligations, applicant prerequisites, a process for choosing a permanent location, administrative steps available under existing law, and “legislative actions necessary to implement the Commission’s recommendations.” The order describes the Space Academy as a “proposed NASA-led Federal academy.” After presidential approval “and any necessary legislative action,” the NASA Administrator is directed to implement approved recommendations “consistent with applicable law and available fiscal resources.”

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman joined the Houston ceremony, NASA said in its media advisory. SpaceNews and TIME, reading the order and White House materials, identified Isaacman as chair and named Michael Kratsios and Kevin Hassett as the vice chairs by office. Trump told the audience he would choose a location “very shortly” and compared the project to West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy, and the Coast Guard Academy, TIME reported from his remarks.

At the same event, Trump awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen. NASA said the crew completed a roughly 10-day mission around the Moon that ended April 10, flying farther from Earth than any previous human crew and becoming the first astronauts to fly NASA’s Orion spacecraft beyond the Moon in more than 50 years. NASA’s image article credits the ceremony photographs to NASA/John Kraus and says there are now 34 recipients of the medal since Congress authorized it in 1969.

The power split is plain on the page. The president can stand up a commission and a report. Building a federal service academy still depends on legislation, appropriations, and whatever site and governance the report proposes. The medals are separate: Congressionally created, awarded by the president on the NASA administrator’s recommendation for a completed lunar flight.

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