NASA recently accomplished a huge feat by landing its Mars rover Curiosity on the Red Planet, but one of the questions on the minds of many was why such a sophisticated machine used 2 MP cameras.

Mike Ravine, a project manager from Malin Space Science Systems, was happy to answer that in an interview with Digital Photography Review. He said the main reasons for using 2 MP sensors in the cameras were the amount of data produced, the fact that they had to meet the needs of different cameras, and the team's familiarity with these sensors.