Becoming an astronaut is what everyone used to dream about in their childhood, every year, thousands of young people apply for NASA aspiring to make an odyssey into Space. NASA is now all set to announce the names of the selected candidates who will be undertaken as astronauts.  Sources from the Johnson Space Centre in Houston on Wednesday, the space agency has brought in this news.

According to the news from the space agency, over 18,300 people applied for the vacancies and the selected applicants, would begin their training in spacecraft systems, spacewalking skills, teamwork, Russian language and other necessary skills from August of this year.

“After completing two years of training, the new astronaut candidates could be assigned to missions performing research at the International Space Station — launching from the American soil, and also launching on deep space missions,” read NASA’s statement.

“With more human spacecraft in development in the US than at any other time in history, the future astronauts… will take humans farther into space than ever before,” NASA added.

The applications for this year’s recruits are accepted in between December 2015 to February 2016.

As of now, the space agency also aims to launch crews into orbit around the Moon, and on missions to Mars in Orion capsules to be lifted from John Kennedy Space Centre by the Space Launch System rocket. In addition to all of that, the rocket’s first unmanned test flight is targeted for 2019, with a first manned flight possibly around 2022.