Jul 17, 2014 11:08 AM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Apollo 11, the NASA space mission that brought Neil Armstrong (deceased 2012), Buzz Aldrin (84) and Michael Collins (83) to the moon, is celebrating its 45th anniversary.

In just a matter of days, NASA will get to commemorate 45 years to the day when Armstrong became the first person to ever walk on the moon. On July 20, 1969, with a live television audience looking on, he delivered one of the most iconic lines in American history.

"One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind."

Now 45 years older, Aldrin has been outspoken in encouraging NASA to make another historic milestone by putting a man on Mars. He told the Washington Post he would like to see the next U.S. President use Apollo 11's 50th anniversary (July 20, 2019) to make a vow to reach the Red Planet.

"I don't think it's going to be a multibillionaire who does this," Aldrin told the Post of the notion that Elon Musk's SpaceX could accomplish the feat for NASA.

Released last year, Aldrin reveled in his book "Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration," that Armstrong would rather have seen NASA try to put astronauts on the moon for longer periods of time.

As for going to Mars, Aldrin told the Post that whoever goes is probably going to have stay there. Currently, Mars One is planning a trip to bring volunteers on a one-way trip to the Red Planet in 2025 with the intention of colonization.

"If we go and come back, and go and come back, I'm sure Congress will say, 'Oh, we know how to do that, let's spend the money somewhere else,'" Aldrin said. "And everything we will have invested will be sloughed aside."

NASA was already planning on sending astronauts to Mars and have been carefully developing the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator to make such a mission possible. Though they have not announced details of the impending mission, NASA said in a statement this week that Mars is their ultimate goal for the "next giant leap."

CLICK HERE to read the full statement.

"It was 45 years ago that Neil Armstrong took the small step onto the surface of the moon that changed the course of history," NASA said. "The years that followed saw a Space Age of scientific, technological and human research, on which we have built the modern era. We stand on a new horizon, poised to take the next giant leap-deeper into the solar system. The Apollo missions blazed a path for human exploration to the moon and today we are extending that path to near-Earth asteroids, Mars and beyond."

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