UTEP president joins leadership team to bring US Space Academy to Texas
EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — University of Texas at El Paso President Heather Wilson will help build a proposal to bring the U.S. Space Academy to Texas. Tuesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced a team of Texans assigned to encourage the federal government to bring the academy to the Lone Star State.
In August, President Donald Trump signed an executive order at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to establish a Presidential Commission on the U.S. Space Academy. That commission will recommend a permanent location.
Gov. Abbott said the new leadership team will work with the Texas Space Commission to propose Texas as the academy’s location.
Texas State Representative Greg Bonnen will lead the team, according to Gov. Abbott.
Wilson is the former secretary of the U.S. Air Force. She is one of several team members working at a Texas university.
Gov. Abbott argued Texas has the foundation a national space academy requires. On top of NASA’s Houston center, he said Texas universities train engineers, scientists and operators for space operations.
“Texas is the home of America’s human spaceflight program,” said Governor Abbott in a statement. “No state can match what Texas brings to this mission.”
He also said the state has major military installations and a commercial space industry that already builds, launches and operates systems for space.
Other team members include:
Nancy Currie-Gregg, director of the Texas A&M Space Institute, retired Army Colonel and a former NASA astronaut. Evan Loomis, member of the Texas Space Commission Board of Directors. Robert Ambrose, Associate Director of the Texas A&M Space Institute. Jack Fischer, senior vice president at Intuitive Machines, retired Air Force Colonel and a former NASA astronaut. Lori A. Magruder, director of the University of Texas at Austin Center for Space Research.Gov. Abbott is running for reelection this November against Democratic candidate Gina Hinojosa.
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