This is a great, detailed description about what it's like to do image processing from a space probe on Mars http://cdn.oreilly.com/radar/2012/08/Beautiful_Dat

This is a great, detailed description about what it's like to do image processing from a space probe on Mars http://cdn.oreilly.com/radar/2012/08/Beautiful_Data_Chapter3.pdf http://cdn.oreilly.com/radar/2012/08/Beautiful_Data_Chapter3... It's from O'Reilly's "Beautiful Data", made available free in honor of the current mars mission. The short answer (covered in that document) is actually that the sensors have to be hardened for space use and are not consumer grade. They are incredibly expensive to produce.