Affordable yet effective: engineers have proposed developing a budget-friendly device for exploring planets.

As noted by specialists at Micocosm, Inc., conventional automatic interplanetary probes are extremely expensive and complex devices that take decades to develop. The Hummingbird probe proposed by the company’s engineers features a platform that can easily accommodate various payloads—from cameras to magnetic field detectors—for the study of near-Earth asteroids or missions to Mars and Venus.

The fully operational Hummingbird device is expected to weigh only 25 kilograms, while fully fueled, it will weigh 80 kilograms.