In an unprecedented endeavor to speed up human exploration of the red planet, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have announced a collaborative program with industry leaders Lockheed Martin and BWX Technologies to develop and test a nuclear propulsion system that could significantly reduce the travel time to Mars.

The program, known as DRACO, short for Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, comes with a price tag of $499 million and seeks to revolutionize the future of interplanetary travel and satellite maneuvering.