Space.com By Mike Wall 2/5/2020
And a gallery guest was a kid with Space Force ambitions.Space exploration got a couple of shout-outs in President Donald Trump's State of the Union address Tuesday night (Feb. 4).
During the nearly 80-minute speech, Trump touted the recent establishment of the Space Force — the first new U.S. military branch to be stood up since the Air Force in 1947 — as one of his administration's key accomplishments thus far.
And one of the president's special guests for the State of the Union, which is held every year in the House of Representatives chamber of the U.S. Capitol building, was a kid with Space Force dreams.
"In the gallery tonight, we have a young gentleman," Trump said. "And what he wants so badly — 13 years old — Iain Lanphier, he is an eighth-grader from Arizona. Iain, please stand up. Iain has always dreamed of going to space. He was the first in his class and among the youngest at an aviation academy. He aspires to go to the Air Force Academy, and then he has his eye on the Space Force. As Iain says, 'Most people look up at space; I want to look down on the world.'"
President Trump also referenced NASA's Artemis program of crewed lunar exploration. Artemis aims to put astronauts on the surface of the moon by 2024 and use Earth's nearest neighbor as a training ground for crewed missions to Mars in the 2030s.
More:
https://www.space.com/trump-space-force-moon-mars-plans-state-of-the-union-2020.html
