China claimed that it has outpaced NASA into creating a "warp drive" technology that could prove that interstellar, superfast space travel is more than just a science fiction.

The country has reportedly been funding into the controversial research since 2010, according to the China Academy of Science and Technology (CAST), adding that NASA is merely "reconfirming" what it has already knew.

"National research institutions in recent years have carried out a series of long-term, repeated tests on the EmDrive," Chen Yue, CAST's head of the communication satellite division, said. "NASA's published test results can be said to re-confirm the technology. We have successfully developed several specifications of multiple prototype principles."

Chen confirmed that CAST has already created a test device for the EmDrive and is being experimented in the low-orbit manned satellite Tiangong-2, Express.uk noted.

"The establishment of an experimental verification platform to complete the milli-level micro thrust measurement test, as well as several years of repeated experiments and investigations into corresponding interference factors, confirm that in this type of thruster, thrust exists."

Officially known as the EmDrive propulsion system, the 'warp drive' technology was believed to be impossible as it breaks the law of physics. While spaceships need to create thrust to push them towards the correct direction, the EMDrive has been designed to produce thrust by harnessing light particles and bouncing microwaves around inside a closed, cone-shaped chamber. Such movement generates thrust at the slim end of the cone, driving the engine forward, the Mirror noted.

However, while the research brought great news and was applauded by some, other critics maintained that the concept is inconsistent with Newton's conservation of momentum, which states that an object will not move unless an outside force is applied.

If such technology is successful, space travel could fly humans to the moon in just four hours and to Mars in just a few weeks. But aside from the much-coveted Mars travel, British engineer Roger Shawyer further pointed other significant things EmDrive could do for the world.

"It will be solar power stations, city-to-city long-haul flights using hydrogen. It's green and convenient and will change our world in the next few decades," he said.