CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Thursday he expects the United States to send astronauts to an asteroid and a manned mission to Mars by the mid-2030s, as he defended his revamped U.S. space policy.
"What we're looking for is not just to continue on the same path, we want to leap into the future. We want major breakthroughs, a transformative agenda for NASA," Obama told workers at the Kennedy Space Centre, where thousands of jobs are drying up as the space shuttle is retired at the end of this year.
"The bottom line is, nobody is more committed to manned space flight, to human exploration of space, than I am. But we've got to do it in a smart way," Obama said to applause.
(Reporting by Steve Holland)
