Rolls-Royce and UK Space Agency have announce they will work together to develop nuclear propulsion engines for space travel.
Rolls-Royce hopes believe its nuclear engines could take astronauts to Mars in three to four months. This is twice as quick as our current engines would take.
The partnership between the two groups will bring together scientists to explore how nuclear energy could be used to revolutionise space travel.
Rolls-Royce has provided the nuclear propulsion technology used to power the Royal Navy’s submarine fleet for 60 years.
Britain’s plan to build a nuclear spacecraft will not be the first. US scientists first tested nuclear spacecraft technology in the Nevada desert in the 1950s and 1960s before the programme was cancelled in 1971.
