Since it's banned I can't see to verify the claim it was "unmoderated". Can anybody confirm or refute? Any recent screenshots would be nice. I'd lean toward this being a convenient excuse they used to get rid of a troublesome voice, but would appreciate context.

You're probably right, I'm just avoiding it for good now. And guessing the mods would remove any questioning posts from r/programming. R/outoftheloop would likely help, but again, I'm done giving them traffic or content.

Another small quality-of-life feature that's nice about Lemmy.

Yes, that's the short of it. Each pixel needs its own wires, readout, and processing chain, and resources are limited on the spacecraft. The cryostat (instrument that keeps the pixels cold) only has so much cooling capacity and all the wires add thermal load.

Future missions are planned with more pixels (Take a look at the EASA Athena mission and its X-IFU instrument), and to reach that goal they are using multiplexing methods to allow more pixels to run on fewer wires.