New york: Elon Musk's SpaceX could build a self-growing city on the Moon in less than 10 years, said the American tech billionaire on Monday.

According to Anadolu Agency, Musk also stated that his aerospace company aims to begin building a city on Mars within about five to seven years, despite no human having set foot on Mars yet and no manned Mars mission being scheduled. The company's overriding priority is 'securing the future of civilization' on the Moon, he explained.

'It is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six month trip time), whereas we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (2 day trip time),' Musk wrote on his social media platform X. He emphasized that this frequency allows for faster iterations to complete a Moon city compared to a Mars city, which he estimates would take more than 20 years to achieve.

Musk has previously made optimistic predictions about technology. In 2018, he mentioned that autonomous cars made by his company Tesla 'could probably do a coast-to-coast drive in 3 months, 6 months in the outside.' Similarly, in 2017, he claimed that SpaceX would be flying private citizens around the Moon the following year.