European Space Agency plans to build billion megapixel camera

In digital photography, the amount of pixels on a camera's sensor is directly tied to how much detail (in theory) a sensor can capture. With modern digital cameras, pixels are measured in the megapixels (Mp), or million pixels. Currently, most digital cameras have around 15Mp, give or take 5Mp, with some car-priced professional models having over 50Mp. Now, the European Space Agency (ESA) plans to put all terrestrial cameras to shame with a 1 billion pixel camera.
For the past decade, the ESA has been planning its GAIA (Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics)Telescope, which is designed to create a 3D map the entire Milky Way Galaxy with previously unimaginable detail. Needless to say, such an undertaking will involve quite a camera.

Enter the 1 billion Mp sensor.

A few days ago, the ESA released specifications for GAIA's sensor, which is, to say the least, of mind-boggling proportions. In total, the resolution of the entire sensor array will be over 1 billion Mp. As for the term sensor array, this is because the telescope will not use a single chip like conventional digital cameras (even the $30,000 pro ones) do, but a collection of 106 separate sensors, each measuring in at a monster 4.7 x 6 cm in size, which compares to old medium format film. As for thickness, each sensor is only a few microns thick and all 106 are laid on a 40 pound support structure and separated by only about 1mm from neighboring sensors.
As for the GAIA scope itself, the ESA plans to launch it sometime in 2013. In total, the GAIA project will conduct a census of about a thousand million stars in its 5 year mission and, if estimates are right, discover hundreds of thousands of new celestial objects as well as test the laws of physics themselves.