NASA's New Astronaut Class Will Get Visit from Vice President Mike Pence

Vice President Mike Pence
Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to visit NASA's Johnson Space Center on June 7, to greet the agency's new class of astronauts. (Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to greet NASA's newest class of astronauts Wednesday (June 7). 

NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston is scheduled to host an event on Wednesday to announce the names of its newest class of space travelers. More than 18,000 people applied to the astronaut program during this round, a record for the agency. The event will be broadcast live on NASA TV at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT).

During his visit to JSC, Vice President Pence will tour the mission control center and "hear briefings on current human spaceflight operations," according to a statement from the agency release Friday (June 2). The announcement did not say whether the vice president would deliver remarks during the event. 

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Vice President Pence is set to chair the National Space Council, which will be reinstated per the instruction of the NASA Transition Authorization Act that President Trump signed into law on March 21

NASA is expected to select between eight and 14 new astronauts from among the applicants. The agency is scheduled to continue sending humans to the International Space Station through 2024, and the agency is working on plans to send humans to the space between the Earth and the moon, as well as into lunar orbit, in the 2020s. The agency is working on long-term plans to send humans to Mars as early as the 2030s. 

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Calla Cofield
Senior Writer

Calla Cofield joined Space.com's crew in October 2014. She enjoys writing about black holes, exploding stars, ripples in space-time, science in comic books, and all the mysteries of the cosmos. Prior to joining Space.com Calla worked as a freelance writer, with her work appearing in APS News, Symmetry magazine, Scientific American, Nature News, Physics World, and others. From 2010 to 2014 she was a producer for The Physics Central Podcast. Previously, Calla worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City (hands down the best office building ever) and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. Calla studied physics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is originally from Sandy, Utah. In 2018, Calla left Space.com to join NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory media team where she oversees astronomy, physics, exoplanets and the Cold Atom Lab mission. She has been underground at three of the largest particle accelerators in the world and would really like to know what the heck dark matter is. Contact Calla via: E-Mail – Twitter