LONDON: Extraterrestrial life does exist, the head of Nasa has said, but he insisted that no aliens were hidden in the secretive Area 51.
Major Charles Bolden, the Administrator of Nasa, told British schoolchildren he was confident scientists would find life elsewhere in the universe because there were so many planets similar to Earth.
Asked by 10-year-old Carmen Dearing if he believed in aliens, he said: "I do believe that we will someday find other forms of life or a form of life, if not in our solar system then in some of the other solar systems - the billions of solar systems in the universe.
"Today we know that there are literally thousands, if not millions of other planets, many of which may be very similar to our own Earth. So some of us, many of us, believe that we're going to find... evidence that there is life elsewhere in the universe."
Major Bolden admitted Area 51 exists but said the US government was not hiding alien life there. "There is an Area 51," he said. "It's not what many people think. I've been to a place called that but it's a normal research and development place. I never saw any aliens or alien spacecraft or anything when I was there.
"It think because of the secrecy of the aeronautics research that goes on there it's ripe for people to talk about aliens being there."
The existence of Area 51 has been a badly kept secret for decades, fuelling the imaginations of conspiracy theorists and UFO hunters around the world.
In 2013, the CIA acknowledged its exact location in Nevada, near Groom Lake, in a series of documents released as part of a Freedom of Information request.
The documents revealed the facility had been used during the Second World War as an aerial gunnery for the Army Air Corp pilots. President Dwight Eisenhower later approved "this strip of wasteland, known by its map designation as Area 51", to become the Atomic Energy Commissions Nevada test site and training range. It then became central in the development of the U-2 spy plane.
Nasa is hoping to send humans to Mars in the 2030s but Major Bolden said technological hurdles still needed to be overcome - with one of the main issues being a lack of lavatory facilities.
"The goal is to have us there in the early 2030s. They won't land, they'll probably do an orbital mission like the first time we went to the Moon," said Major Bolden. "We've got to get the Martian surface ready for human habitation.
"We're not going to send humans down to the surface of Mars to build the habitats, the houses, we're probably going to use robots.
"Our technical abilities are not what we want it to be now. We need better life support systems, we need a toilet that's not going to break on the way there, then when we get to the Martian surface we need (a toilet) that's going to work over and over again. Toilets are a big deal."
Major Bolden was asked if he became frustrated by conspiracy theorists who claimed the Moon landing was faked.
"I understand people have doubts," he said. "I have no doubts we went to the moon and I have no doubts that we're going to Mars in your lifetime."
He was answering questions for the children's show Hotseat which is broadcast on Sky News.