There’s a popular belief that projects like this are going to be very advanced but there are things that mitigate against that. These designs were proposed in 2004, and you don’t get to propose one specification and then go off and develop something else. 2MP with 8GB of flash [memory] didn’t sound too bad in 2004. But it doesn’t compare well to what you get in an iPhone today.

—Mike Ravine, a project manager for the Mars Curiosity rover, explains one of the reasons why it only has a 2 megapixel camera.