old research sats use black and white cameras with a color wheel in front, taking separate green, red and blue spectrum images which have to be combined to get a full color image in the end. they can also slide different spectrum filters in front of the camera like uv and infra red, or specialized wavelength filters. the downside to taking pictures this way is that it takes longer than with a cellphone camera. if the object moves during that time, you get color fringing, like on the moon, since the different color images do not exactly overlap.
