The camera in your pocket is hiding tech that was originally made for outer space. The sensor that is now widely used in most smartphone cameras, compact cameras, and mirrorless cameras – the “camera-on-a-chip” CMOS Active Pixel sensor – actually got its start inside a NASA lab.
Before CMOS sensors, digital cameras used charge-coupled devices or CCD sensors. This classic sensor design gathers light from the pixels and sends it to an amplifier in order to convert energy from the light into a digital photograph.
