Russia have announced plans to visit Mars in 2018 using a new nuclear engine that will allow them to reach the red planet in just six weeks. Using current technology it takes spacecraft 18 months to get to Mars, meaning that Russia will become the first country to get there in just over a month – and possibly the first nation to send humans to Mars. Dailymail.co.uk reports: The country is betting on nuclear propulsion because it weighs almost half as much as a chemical rocket without reducing thrust. 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, [...]