Watch Live: NASA Announces 2017 Astronaut Class Along With VP Mike Pence

Come Wednesday afternoon NASA will have some new employees. How many exactly is still a secret. NASA will be announcing its newest class of astronauts at 2 p.m. EDT at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Vice President Mike Pence will be in attendance at the ceremony that will stream online, NASA said. Pence also plans to tour mission control and hear briefings on current missions while he's at the center.

The class will be made up of eight to 14 astronauts with diverse skills and backgrounds chosen from more than 18,000 applicants, a record-breaking applicant pool. The application process was open from December 2015 to February 2016, and the JSC had to bring human resources workers in from other NASA offices to help them sort through the thousands of applications.

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The astronauts in the class announced Wednesday who complete two years of training will then be eligible for assignment on four spacecraft: the International Space Station, NASA’s Orion spacecraft built for deep space exploration that has yet to launch with humans aboard, or one of two entirely new craft still in the works.

The two craft still under development include the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner. They’ll help bring crew to the space station and expand the crew size. The astronauts will be the first class chosen specifically with missions that explore areas outside Earth’s orbit and the moon in mind. During a live video call with astronauts on the International Space Station in April, President Donald Trump said he wanted to see NASA astronauts on Mars in his first term, or second, a mission he hopes to accomplish thanks to a bill he signed funding NASA plans.

The last astronaut class was announced in 2013. Wednesday’s introduction of the new class will be attended by NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot, JSC Director Ellen Ochoa (a former astronaut) and Flight Operations Director Brian Kelly. The three will join the new astronaut class on stage for the event and introduction.

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In the days leading up to the announcement, NASA shared exciting tidbits on its social media accounts. The astronauts were at the center Tuesday for the final fittings for their space suits, according to a tweet.

Current NASA astronauts had a hand in helping screen applications and choose which applicants made it into the final rounds of interviews. They also made a welcome video for their new colleagues that was posted online ahead of the announcement.

The event will be streaming live at 2 p.m. EDT online and followed immediately by a stream of Vice President Pence’s tour of the center and then a news conference on the announcement.

Watch the NASA astronaut class of 2017 announcement live: