COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Editor's Note: The attached video aired in June 2023.
On Tuesday, Gov. Greg Abbott announced the launch of the Texas Space Commission at the Johson Space Center in Houston alongside local, state and industry leaders.
The commission itself has multiple individuals with ties to Texas A&M, including Nancy Currie-Gregg, Ph.D., the Director of the Texas A&M Space Institute and a former NASA astronaut, Evan Loomis, Co-founder of ICON, general partner in Overmatch Ventures, a venture partner for Audere Capital LLC, and an adjunct professor at Texas A&M, among others who are A&M graduates.
"Space and space exploration is a rapidly advancing frontier," Abbott said at the Tuesday event. "It's a greenfield for advanced communications and technology, for artificial intelligence, for robotics, for biotechnology, for supply chain solutions and so much more real-life applications."
In response to Abbott's call for leaders to step up, incoming dean of the Texas A&M College of Engineering Dr. Robert H. Bishop, has said he wants A&M to be involved with the rapidly expanding field by creating a degree in Space Engineering.
“I am thrilled to announce that one of my first orders of business is to help make Texas A&M a world leader in Space Engineering,” Bishop said. “Degrees in Space Engineering will give students at Texas A&M the skills they need to be pioneers in the space industry as they learn to establish exciting new systems for space exploration and research.”
Texas A&M already offers baccalaureate and graduate degrees in aerospace engineering, a field tied to things beyond our home planet. However, the distinction between space engineering and aerospace engineering would be that aerospace engineers work on getting people to the moon and Mars, while space engineers would look to establish and build structures and operations.
The new degree program could be available for students to enroll in starting in fall 2025 but could be delayed while developments in the faculty-driven process are worked out. A series of internal and external reviews will need to be initiated and processed to bring the prospective degree program into reality. The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents and the state of Texas' Higher Education Coordinating Board will also need to approve the process.
Click here to read about the push for the new program on Texas A&M Today.