President Donald Trump signed a bill on Tuesday authorizing the funding of NASA and the exploration of Mars.

The new law allots the space agency $19.5 billion for the 2018 fiscal year and adds a new objective -- sending humans to Mars. It instructs NASA to begin planning for a "crewed mission to Mars in the 2030s," reports The Hill.

NASA's most incredible photos of 2016



20 PHOTOS NASA's best photos of 2016 See Gallery NASA's best photos of 2016 Sunset From the International Space Station Expedition 47 Flight Engineer Jeff Williams of NASA captured a series of photos for this composite image of the setting sun reflected by the ocean. Photo Credit: NASA Space Station Flight Over the Southern Tip of Italy The southern tip of Italy is visible in this image taken by the Expedition 49 crew aboard the International Space Station on Sept. 17, 2016. The brightly lit city of Naples can be seen in the bottom section of the image. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft can be seen in the foreground. Photo Credit: NASA Star Trails Seen From Low Earth Orbit Astronauts on the International Space Station captured a series of incredible star trail images on Oct. 3, 2016, as they orbited at 17,500 miles per hour. The station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, and astronauts aboard see an average of 16 sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours. Photo Credit: NASA Many Fantastic Colors The Nili Fossae region, located on the northwest rim of Isidis impact basin, is one of the most colorful regions of Mars. This region is ancient and has had a complicated geologic history, leading to interesting structures like layered bedrock, as well as other compositions. Photo Credit: NASA Wind Carved Rock on Mars The distinctively fluted surface and elongated hills in this image in Medusae Fossae are caused by wind erosion of a soft fine-grained rock. Called yardangs, these features are aligned with the prevailing wind direction. This wind direction would have dominated for a very long time to carve these large-scale features into the exposed rock. Photo Credit: NASA Rains of Terror on Exoplanet HD 189733b This Halloween, take a tour with NASA's Exoplanet Exploration site of some of the most terrifying destinations in our galaxy. The nightmare world of HD 189733 b is the killer you never see coming. To the human eye, this far-off planet looks bright blue. But any space traveler confusing it with the friendly skies of Earth would be badly mistaken. Photo Credit: NASA Aurora and Manicouagan Crater An astronaut aboard the International Space Station adjusted the camera for night imaging and captured the green veils and curtains of an aurora that spanned thousands of kilometers over Quebec, Canada. Photo Credit: NASA Paris at Night Around local midnight time on April 8, 2015, astronauts aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of Paris, often referred to as the “City of Light.” The pattern of the street grid dominates at night, providing a completely different set of visual features from those visible during the day. Photo Credit: NASA Stargazing From the International Space Station Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) see the world at night on every orbit — that’s 16 times each crew day. An astronaut took this broad, short-lens photograph of Earth’s night lights while looking out over the remote reaches of the central equatorial Pacific Ocean. Photo Credit: NASA Election Day 2016 Thanks to a bill passed by Texas legislators that put in place technical voting procedure for astronauts, they have the ability to vote from space through specially designed absentee ballots. To preserve the integrity of the secret vote, the ballot is encrypted and only accessible by the astronaut and the county clerk responsible for casting it. Photo Credit: NASA Fiery South Atlantic Sunset An astronaut aboard the International Space Station photographed a sunset that looks like a vast sheet of flame. With Earth’s surface already in darkness, the setting sun, the cloud masses, and the sideways viewing angle make a powerful image of the kind that astronauts use to commemorate their flights. Photo Credit: NASA Ring Details on Display This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft showcases some of the amazingly detailed structure of Saturn's rings. Photo Credit: NASA Hubble Takes Flight with the Toucan and the Cluster NGC 299 is an open star cluster located within the Small Magellanic Cloud just under 200,000 light-years away. Photo Credit: NASA Hubble Spies Spiral Galaxy Spiral galaxy NGC 3274 is a relatively faint galaxy located over 20 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). Photo Credit: NASA Practicing Orion Spacecraft Recovery After Splashdown A group of U.S. Navy divers, Air Force pararescuemen and Coast Guard rescue swimmers practice Orion underway recovery techniques in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center to prepare for the first test flight of an uncrewed Orion spacecraft with the agency’s Space Launch System rocket during Exploration Mission (EM-1). Photo Credit: NASA A Trio of Plumes in the South Sandwich Islands On September 29, 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this false-color image (MODIS bands 7-2-1) showing volcanic activity in the South Sandwich Islands. Located in the South Atlantic Ocean, the uninhabited South Sandwich Islands include several active stratovolcanoes. Photo Credit: NASA Infrared Echoes of a Black Hole Eating a Star This illustration shows a glowing stream of material from a star, disrupted as it was being devoured by a supermassive black hole. The feeding black hole is surrounded by a ring of dust. This dust was previously illuminated by flares of high-energy radiation from the feeding black hole, and is now shown re-radiating some of that energy. Photo Credit: NASA Hubble Views a Colorful Demise of a Sun-like Star This star is ending its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which formed a cocoon around the star's remaining core. Credit: NASA Infrared Saturn Clouds This false-color view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows clouds in Saturn's northern hemisphere. The view was made using images taken by Cassini's wide-angle camera on July 20, 2016, using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to infrared light at 750, 727 and 619 nanometers. Photo credit: NASA Moonset Viewed From the International Space Station Expedition 47 Flight Engineer Tim Peake of ESA took this striking photograph of the moon from his vantage point aboard the International Space Station on March 28, 2016. Peake shared the image on March 30 and wrote to his social media followers, "I was looking for #Antarctica – hard to spot from our orbit. Settled for a moonset instead." Photo credit: NASA Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE

"For almost six decades, NASA's work has inspired millions and millions of Americans to imagine distant worlds and a better future right here on Earth," Trump said during the signing.

SEE ALSO: NASA announces plan to turn the sun into a giant 'magnifying glass'

The president signed the bill in the Oval Office surrounded by astronauts and supporters of the bill, including Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who traveled into space in 1986 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla) also attended the bill's signing.

"Now, this nation is ready to be the first in space once again," said Trump.

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