This was brilliant to me at first blush. After thinking about it, though, wouldn't the image have to be a higher resolution to compensate for the blurring of the chromatic aberration? When you process out the blur to extract the color information, you'll have less resolution left over. I'm guessing that would offset the gains on using a single channel. Ultimately for "full color", at a specific resolution, you need a specific number of bits of information, regardless if it's encoded in three color channels, or a single channel.
It might still be good for other reasons, though. Like if the colour filters used in space probes degrade over time (I don't know, do they?) then it would allow more consistent colour recording. Also it might be usable on very small probes that primarily take black and white images but can capture colour (at expense of resolution) if required.
