It's possible these fresh, far-out ideas for space travel backed by NASA will change the game.

NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) programme funds preliminary research into technologies that may one day be used to aid in space exploration. NASA said earlier this month that it would award 14 researchers with $175,000 NIAC funds to push the limits of possibility and help the space agency test out promising new technologies.

With the help of America's inventors and entrepreneurs, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program fosters ideas with the potential to revolutionise future NASA missions by developing breakthroughs, such as significantly improved or altogether new aeronautical concepts.

Some of the ideas chosen for Phase 1 of the NIAC this year involve space telescopes, such as one that would use interferometry to create an observatory out of thousands of identical small satellites, and another that would use fluidic shaping in microgravity to create a 164-foot-wide (50-meter) unsegmented mirror. Another design for a telescope is to see planets like Earth around sun-like stars within 10 parsecs (32.6 light-years) of Earth.

We will look into the feasibility of using nuclear-powered engines and pellet-beam propulsion for interplanetary travel. Newly funded ideas include a flying boat to explore Saturn's massive moon Titan and a hybrid fusion rapid fission nuclear reactor to reach Jupiter's Europa, which is believed to have an ocean beneath its frozen surface.

'NASA has the courage to achieve the impossible. This is only possible due of the creative minds and hard workers who are planning for the next steps in space travel 'On January 9th, NASA issued a statement in which Administrator Bill Nelson remarked.

Nelson explains that the NIAC programme provides 'the tools and assistance needed to drive technologies which will allow future NASA missions.'