Curiosity Rover: No Video on Mars?

Yeah, the nuke power source has a couple of purposes, it may be first and foremost to retain heat overnight...I mentioned it though to also point out that solar panels on an earlier rover had gotten too much dust on them, and then a storm blew it off, to illustrate that there are weather events on Mars.

So true though that Mars is close, and yet so far. It really makes you realize how we are literally on an island in space.

These missions are so few and far between, the last ones being 2004 or so, it is disappointing that a more robust camera didn't make it up there. Ah well, makes me want to try to create photorealistic 3D flybys and stuff now...
 
On the heat issue I believe it was one of the other mobile space probes that had bags of an oil/gel like substance on the exterior during sunlight..they heated up then when night fell they cooled releasing their heat keeping the vehicle from freezing
 
The answer to the question of why the rover's main camera has a worse resolution than current budget mobile phones is quite simple. The Curiosity project was approved in 2004 when the presence of a 2-megapixel matrix at the main camera of a Mars rover with 8 GB of flash memory sounded quite convincing, which is not now. But the specificity of such super-complex projects is that after approval in the process of their implementation, it is not so easy to replace some component with another in connection with the new solutions that have appeared.
 
I think they could afford to add a video to all their research if they outsource the development of the necessary equipment to a private company that does not need so much paperwork. (Maybe). But I have to agree that in the case of Mars, where there are no significant atmospheric phenomena, video is not needed. The video may be needed on satellites that watch our own planet. And also, I think the video will be needed when space agencies explore new planets with atmospheres. The study of which would be more logical for the perspective of colonization. In the case of the similarity of the atmosphere to Earth, of course. But it takes too long to fly to the nearest similar planets known to mankind)
 
Getting video back from another planet is hard, video files are BIG!

There are other problems as well, you can't just put semiconductors in space, certain manufacturing process designs fail from the radiation that our atmosphere protects us from enduring. Generally the smaller the process, the more affected by radiation. I'm sure we've made some inroads to fixing this, but not sure exactly where we've gotten to this point. You can shield everything, but that gets heavy.
 
I'm surprised the OP didn't complain of the lack of bokeh. One of the limitation is the amount of time to develop and deploy such technology. So this was launched 2011. Must have taken many years to develop, so it's tech is already over a decade old. The other thing is it's amazing it can transmit data that far away back to us and video no less. I mean it takes a long time to upload a video to youtube using broadband. The last point, there probably not much to be gained viewing ground videos of a dusty desert planet at a higher resolution. So yes I'm disappointed the un-cinematic 720p footage without a frost filter.
 
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