At a time when phone cameras are capable of taking snapshots with millions of pixels, an instrument on the Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) satellite captures revolutionary science with just 36 of them. “That may sound impossible, but it’s actually true,” said Richard Kelley, the U.S. principal investigator for XRISM at NASA’s Goddard […]
I don’t know about cooling specifically, but for most space-bound equipment, it’s all about SWaP: space (volume of the equipment on the rocket), weight (more weight means more propellant needed), and power (you only get so many watts out of a given solar panel, and if you want more, go back to step one).
So they presumably found that 6x6 is an acceptable configuration for the available resources.
And that doesn’t even touch on the equipment itself, like _WC did. More pixels means more complexity means more engineering, testing, etc.
I don’t know about cooling specifically, but for most space-bound equipment, it’s all about SWaP: space (volume of the equipment on the rocket), weight (more weight means more propellant needed), and power (you only get so many watts out of a given solar panel, and if you want more, go back to step one).
So they presumably found that 6x6 is an acceptable configuration for the available resources.
And that doesn’t even touch on the equipment itself, like _WC did. More pixels means more complexity means more engineering, testing, etc.