President Obama wants NASA to land astronauts on Mars by 2030

Barack Obama has called on NASA to land American astronauts on Mars by 2030.

The President pledged to work with private companies to "to build new habitats that can sustain and transport astronauts on long-duration missions in deep space".

"We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America's story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time," Obama said in an opinion piece for CNN.

Obama's comments come ahead of a meeting planned by the White House in Pittsburgh this week aimed at teaming up scientists, students and others to further efforts to develop the commercial space market.

While private companies are already working on missions to space, including t humans have yet to travel to Mars, which is some 35 million miles from our own planet..

Mars has seasons a bit like ours and a 2012 NASA mission found it may once have supported microbial life.

It would take about nine months to get to Mars, depending on rocket velocity, some NASA experts have said.

A high-speed trip could take as little as 130 days, they said on the agency's website.

It has been decades since the United States sent astronauts to the moon in 1969, and efforts to fund the space program have faltered in recent years over concerns about government spending and fiscal priorities.