Russia has announced that it will test a nuclear engine in 2018 that could help cosmonauts reach Mars in just six weeks.

This compares to the 18 months spacecraft currently need to get to Mars, and could make Russia the first nation to land humans on the red planet.

The country is betting on nuclear propulsion because it weighs almost half as much as a chemical rocket without reducing thrust.

Russia has announced that it will test a nuclear engine in 2018 that could help cosmonauts reach Mars in just six weeks. This compares to the 18 months spacecraft currently need to get to Mars. The Soviet Union had over 30 fission powered satellites during the Cold War, such as this Rorsat

This means larger payloads of cargo can be carried on the spacecraft and they can also be made to travel far faster.

And unlike existing technology which uses defined trajectories, a nuclear engine also allows a spacecraft to manoeuvre throughout the flight.

The $274 million project, which was originally overseen by the space agency RosCosmos in 2010, has now become the responsibility of nuclear group, Rosatom.

'A nuclear power unit makes it possible to reach Mars in a matter of one to one and a half months, providing capability for manoeuvring and acceleration,' Sergey Kirienko, head of Rosatom told RT .

'Today's engines can only reach Mars in a year and a half, without the possibility of return.'

Russia currently has used over 30 fission reactors in space, the US has flown only one - the SNAP-10A (System for Nuclear Auxiliary Power) in 1965.