Build a rocket that can orbit the Earth in three seconds.

An American company is researching and developing the world's first antimatter-powered rocket, capable of speeds many times faster than even the fastest spacecraft currently available.

Current missile technology is still quite limited. (Illustrative image: Reuters)

The Voyager 1 spacecraft is currently humanity's fastest flying object, traveling at approximately 14 kilometers per second, and is capable of leaving the solar system within a few years. However, that speed pales in comparison to the distances in space. The Andromeda galaxy, the closest galaxy to us, is still 2.5 million light-years from Earth.

"A speed of 14 kilometers per second is really slow, considering the vast distances in space," Ryan Weed stated at the Wired 2015 conference on October 16th. He is the co-founder and CEO of Positron Dynamics, a California-based company affiliated with aerospace companies such as SpaceX and NASA. "We need a much better rocket, a more efficient way to get into space."

Energy from antimatter is obtained through a process called "cancellation." This is a unique property of antimatter: when antimatter and matter collide, they cancel each other out and produce pure energy. This is the most direct conversion of matter into energy.

To illustrate the power of an antimatter engine, Weed gives the example that if you have 20 grains of salt and 20 "antimatter salt" particles colliding, the energy produced would be equivalent to more than 1,800 tons of conventional rocket fuel, or equivalent to the energy that the entire city of London uses in a day.

With an antimatter engine, a rocket could orbit the Earth in three seconds, reach Mars in a few weeks, Pluto in a few months, and the Alpha Centauri system in about 40 years. At Voyager 1's speed, it would take 30,000 years to reach this system.

However, current technology does not yet allow for the exploitation of this fuel source. Positrons, the antimatter of electrons intended for use, still only exist at very high temperatures and cannot yet be controlled.

"With current technology, only one out of every 1,000 positrons can be harnessed to generate energy; the efficiency is too low," Weed explained. To address this problem, Weed and his research team filed a patent for a system of "positron cooling using electromagnetic fields combined with semiconductors."

The company's immediate goal is to build a shoebox-sized satellite using an antimatter engine to launch into orbit. If successful, the project would not only serve future space travel goals but could also significantly reduce the cost of launching satellites into low Earth orbits for technology companies like Google and Samsung. Samsung is planning to launch 5,000 satellites to create a global broadband network.

According to VnExpress