NASA scientist Philip Lubin has been developing a photonic propulsion system that may decrease Mars voyages from six months to just three days. One of the largest obstacles in the missions for the Red Planet isn’t technology to stay and deal with climate there, rather it is time.

A rocket’s trip to Mars is a six-month journey under perfect conditions, and coming back to Earth has its issues. But, all this can be managed if the trip is cut short from six months to only three days.

According to NASA's Philip Lubin, three day travel to Mars is possible. Lubin is working on a laser-based photonic propulsion system to change the idea into a reality.

Lubin said, “There are recent advances that take this from science fiction to science reality. There is no known reason why we can’t do this”.

Here’s how it is going to work. Existing rocket propulsion-systems are fuel-based, requiring large volumes of fuel for moving objects of huge mass. Thus, the goal of NASA is to create an electromagnetically-accelerated propulsion system that works by the energy of light and radiation. Such a move will bypass the disadvantages of the present propulsion systems, and can tentatively be applied to spaceships of any size.

The incredible fact is that the process is already in used by the Large Hadron Collider's superconducting magnets. They use a similar setup, and that just hasn’t been scaled for spaceships. The system by Lubin would fix huge sails to a spacecraft, capturing the photons from massive Earth-based lasers for moving the vessel.

As per the current calculations, a 100-kg robotic craft may pick up sufficient momentum to reach the Red Planet in just three days. A full-sized human spacecraft equipped with photonic propulsion would require nearly a month, which is still amazing.