If I understand and remember it correctly, HiRISE doesn't have an FPS in the traditional sense. It's best to think of the detector as a one-dimensional array of pixels. The motion of the satellite in its orbit then sweeps this array over the ground, allowing two-dimensional images to be made - one of the dimensions is time, but when something is moving, time becomes a spatial dimension.
On a related note, the "forward looking" in FLIR refers to the fact that FLIR cameras are not sideways tracking, or "pushbroom". The name doesn't actually have anything to do with where the FLIR camera is mounted.
Interesting, its like "scanning" not a shutter "clicking". That being said it was much more likely given the MRO's orbit that it would be able to scan Mars and have Curiosity in that scan path. You can even correlate the angle of the photo to the location of the MRO: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/672880main_martin_mur-1-4...
To be fair, most modern (CMOS) digital cameras work like that too, it's called a rolling shutter. The scanning speed is the cause of that wobbly effect you see on videos made with mobile phones.
True, but if you can do 1m fps on earth[1] and the MRO travels at a speed of 133,879.68 inches/second then you could take 7.4693934 pictures per inch even if you had a rolling "scanning" shutter. I know that would be way to much data for them to process, but for the 172 seconds from parachute deployment to touchdown you could have one amazing high speed film.
