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Comment by mkoryak | Hacker News Reader

How many megapixels is this one?

The main imager is the Near Infrared Camera. It has ten 2048x2048 sensors. They're configured in two kinda-independent groups with separate optics. Each group uses one of those sensors for longer wavelengths (so you get two lots of 2048x2048), and four of them for shorter wavelengths (so you get two lots of 4096x4096). The two modules can (and I guess usually will) be pointed at adjacent regions of the sky; I expect they'll overlap them a bit so you'll get slightly under 4096x2048 for the long wavelengths and slightly under 8192x4096 for the short. These are monochrome sensors but they have an array of filters they can swap in to measure different wavelengths.

There are several other instruments, including some other imagers.

Considering how much camera sensors have improved in the last few years I wonder how outdated these sensors are (or not)

Edit: makes me also wonder if with all the delays they upgrade any equipment in the meantime.

Hard to tell, since you can't use off-the-shelf sensors. They have to withstand the harsh environment in space, for a very long time, without any maintenance.

They're also specifically designed to operate in absurdly low temperatures — one in fact requires temperatures under 7 Kelvin and so in addition to the sun shield there's a mechanical cooler.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRI_(Mid-Infrared_Instrument)

"Only" about 10 years. This has a very complicated orbit and needs to use fuel to adjust and stay on it.

I was working on an in space assembly project at NASA recently although it was in a research department so we were not concerned about using space rated equipment. We were exploring both traditional methods and reinforcement learning. The cameras we were using were 2048x2048 and I asked around about what we could expect to have available if it went to space and I think the best off the shelf space rated camera was about 720p so anything more would need to be custom.

I seem to remember the detector arrays for MIRI were built sometime between 2005 and 2009. (I worked on MIRI for a time in 2011)

> makes me also wonder if with all the delays they upgrade any equipment in the meantime.

This is how you never launch the damn thing. There is just no way to "upgrade any equipment" without introducing a tremendous amount of paperwork, additional testing, etc.

The complete array works out at 937 megapixels. (As of 2011. It may have changed.)

http://optics.org/news/2/7/9

So about 14 smartphones of 2019

Beyond a doubt the sensors on a 2019 smartphone would pale in comparison to what is on that craft, and not just in resolution.

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