Astronaut Peggy Whitson from Iowa sets space duration record

Iowa-born astronaut Peggy Whitson set a record early Monday for the most time an American has spent in space — and still has five months to go aboard the International Space Station.

She set the record at 12:27 a.m. Iowa time. Her cumulative time in space surpassed the 534 days, two hours and 48 minutes amassed by astronaut Jeff Williams by August 2016, NASA said.

The day was marked by a call to the space station by President Donald Trump, who also used the occasion to stump for human trips to Mars.

'What an amazing thing you've done,' said Trump, speaking from the Oval Office on his first call with an astronaut aboard the $100 billion orbital outpost.

'It's a huge honor to break a record like this,' Whitson said with a beaming smile. 'It's an honor for me, basically, to be representing all the folks at NASA who make this spaceflight possible and who make me setting this record feasible.'

Whitson also holds the record for the most time spent spacewalking by a woman. In 2008, she became the first woman to command the space station, which is about 250 miles above Earth.

She and newly arrived rookie crewmate Jack Fischer, 43, both spoke with the president, who was joined on the call by his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins.

Trump, who has proposed keeping the NASA annual $19.5 billion budget roughly unchanged next fiscal year, talked about plans for human trips to Mars, tentatively to start in the 2030s.

'It's a huge honor to break a record like this. It's an honor for me, basically, to be representing all the folks at NASA who make this spaceflight possible and who make me setting this record feasible.'

- Astronaut Peggy Whitson

On breaking the record for the most days spent in space by an American

'Well, we want to try to do that during my first term, or at worst during my second term, so we'll have to speed that up a little bit, OK?' he quipped.

'We'll do our best,' Whitson said.

The Iowa native is part of Expedition 50/51, her third long-duration mission to the space station. She and her crewmates launched for the mission on Nov. 17, 2016.

She previously completed two six-month tours aboard the space station for Expedition 5 in 2002 and as the station commander for Expedition 16 in 2008.

Last month, the current mission was extended until September. According to NASA, Whitson will have accumulated more than 650 days in space by the time she returns to Earth.

Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka is the world record-holder, with 878 days in orbit.

Whitson was born in 1960 in Mount Ayr and grew up in nearby Beaconsfield in southern Iowa, her NASA biography says. She graduated from Mount Ayr High School in 1978 and went on to receive a bachelor's of science degree in biology and chemistry from Iowa Wesleyan College in 1981 and a doctorate in biochemistry from Rice University in Texas in 1985.

Reuters contributed to this report.