Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced the creation of a leadership team to secure the state as the permanent home of the United States Space Academy. Representative Greg Bonnen, Chair of the Texas House Appropriations Committee, will lead the team. The announcement follows President Donald Trump's signing of an executive order establishing a Presidential Commission on the United States Space Academy, which Trump signed at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The leadership team will work with the Texas Space Commission to prepare Texas' statewide proposal and present it to the federal government. Texas already hosts NASA's Johnson Space Center, designated as the agency's Human Spaceflight Center of Excellence and home to the astronaut corps. The state is home to 15 major military installations, top research universities that train engineers and scientists for civil, commercial, and military space roles, and a commercial space industry that builds, launches, and operates space systems.
The proposal leadership team includes former NASA astronauts Dr. Nancy Currie-Gregg, Director of the Texas A&M Space Institute, and Jack Fischer, Senior Vice President at Intuitive Machines. Other members include Dr. Heather Wilson, President of the University of Texas at El Paso and former Secretary of the United States Air Force; Dr. Robert Ambrose, Associate Director of the Texas A&M Space Institute; Evan Loomis, member of the Texas Space Commission Board of Directors; and Dr. Lori A. Magruder, Director of the University of Texas at Austin Center for Space Research.