So, the Opportunity rover is advanced enough to have a plutonium power supply, but it has a black and white camera? What’s up with that?
Each rover has a total of 9 cameras, which produce 1024-pixel by 1024-pixel images at 12 bits per pixel,[39] but most navigation camera images and image thumbnails are truncated to 8 bits per pixel to conserve memory and transmission time. All images are then compressed using ICER before being stored and sent to Earth. Navigation, thumbnail, and many other image types are compressed to approximately 0.8 to 1.1 bits/pixel. Lower bit rates (less than 0.5 bit/pixel) are used for certain wavelengths of multi-color panoramic images.
Panoramic Camera (Pancam), for determining the texture, color, mineralogy, and structure of the local terrain.
Navigation Camera (Navcam), that has higher field of view but lower resolution and is monochromatic, for navigation and driving.
The problem is that they don’t have Wal-Mart on Mars, only Wal-Martian, and the Photo Center there handles only Black & White or Red & White. Then, to get your prints delivered the postal service from Mars really stinks. MPS is even slower than USPS, and a 1st class stamp costs like a bazillion dollars.
Just hope that Opportunity never invites you to his house to look at his slides. “And here I am, looking at a rock.” click “And here I am, looking at another rock.” click … Oh gee, look at the time, I think I’d better be going now.