We will one day find aliens, but they’re not in Area 51, the head of Nasa has said.

There are so many other planets that “we're going to find...evidence that there is life elsewhere in the universe”, Nasa administrator Major Charles Frank Bolden Jr told school children on Sky News.

Asked by 10-year-old Carmen Dearing on the channel’s Hot Seat programme, 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."

Admitting that there was an Area 51 — the highly-confidential US government site that has often been rumoured to hide away secret aliens and their space ships — Bolden said that it’s “not what many think”.

“I’ve been to a place called that but it’s a normal research and development place,” he said. “I never saw any aliens or alien spacecraft or anything when I was there.

“I think because of the secrecy of the aeronautics research that goes on there it’s ripe for people to talk about aliens being there.”