The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is using more "Star Trek" ideas than some would realize. NASA has tested an "impossible" engine.

At the beginning of this month, NASA unveiled what is called the "Cannae Drive" technology, an engine that perhaps should not even exist. The propulsion engine could reduce space travel to planets such as Mars to months and no longer years. While the impossible engine is only in its infancy, it has some experts excited, and others questioning the results and validity of this engine.

Scientists of NASA's Eagleworks Laboratories in Houston, Texas produced their paper findings at a conference in Cleveland, Ohio. The research paper indicated that they were able to create a small amount of thrust from a container that produced no traditional fuels, The Verge reported. The thrust was created using microwaves that bounced around inside the container.

NASA has only been able to produce a small amount of the aforementioned energy over a two-day period. If they could sustain the energy over a longer period it could be the result as an "ultra-light weight, and a super fast spacecraft" that could carry people across planets, and to the nearest star system outside of Earth, The Verge reported.

The Cannae Drive is a new type of engine that NASA has tested, and it does not require the use of heavy liquid propellant or nuclear reactors. All it needs is electricity. The idea behind it is that the microwaves bounce around from end-to-end in a specially designed and unevenly shaped container, this creates a change in radiation pressure. As a result of the microwave movement, a thrust is exerted towards the larger end of the container, The Verge reported.

Similarly, the Cannae Drive is a type of technology that is called an "EmDrive" which has already been demonstrated to work in small scale trials by Chinese and Argentine scientists.

The Cannae Drive is perhaps breaking the laws of physics. According to some critics, this device has breached the principle of conservation of momentum -- that is Momentum = Mass X Velocity, Forbes reported. The authors of the paper stated that their intent was to display evidence that used "classical magneto-plasma-dynamics to obtain a propulsive momentum transfer via the quantum vacuum virtual plasma." The scientists had declined to explain further what they meant.

Sean Carroll, a physicist from the California Institute of Technology, called the NASA scientists' explanation "nonsensical sub-Star-Trek level technobabble," Forbes reported.

There is more criticism about the Cannae Drive and its origins. The machine's inventor Guido Fetta has only a Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering, and his company is operating the Cannae as a for-profit business venture, The Verge reported.  

The test results of the Cannae Drive were presented by five scientists -- David Brady, Harold White, Paul March, James Lawrence and Frank Davies -- from NASA's Johnson Space Center, Forbes reported. The genesis of the Cannae and EmDrives came from an 1871 calculation discovered by James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell posited that photons of light had exerted for a minute but with observable pressure.

NASA has big plans and they are not alone. NASA, among other companies, have decided to launch probes with giant space sails that solar wind could blow it to the furthest reaches of our solar system, Forbes reported.

If possible, NASA could use the solar panels to conduct electricity which is needed to make the thrusters work. In other words, the propulsion of the Cannae Drive would be at a low-thrust, and operating for a long period of time with little or no cost, Extreme Tech reported.

Realistically, by having the Cannae Drive, it might not reduce the cost of keeping satellites working and running in orbit, but it could be a larger step to making interstellar travel much easier.