Even the human eye basically follows the same principle. We have 3 types of cones, each sensitive to different portions of wavelength, and our visual cortex combines each cone cell's single-dimensional inputs representing the intensity of light hitting that cell in its sensitivity range, from both eyes, plus the information from the color-blind rods, into a seamless single image.

There are some sensors that have each color stacked vertically instead of using a Bayer filter. Don’t think they’re popular because the low light performance is worse.

At least for astronomy, you just have one sensor (they’re all CMOS nowadays) and rotate out the RGB filters in front of it.

3chip cmos sensors are about 20-25 years out of date technology. Mosaic pattern sensors have eclipsed them on most imaging metrics.