The solar wings that will power ESA's Hera asteroid mission for planetary defense as it ventures out to meet the Dimorphos asteroid have been cleared for flight. As part of its current test campaign at ESA's ESTEC Test Center in the Netherlands, the spacecraft commanded the deployment of the wings one at a time, as it will do in space directly after launch—known as a "hot deployment."

The van-sized spacecraft is equipped with two 5-m long wings, made up of three hinged panels each. This adds up to an overall area of approximately 14 square meters in all, with more than 1,600 solar cells in total. Azur Space in Germany manufactured the solar cells, which were then interconnected and arranged into working arrays by Leonardo in Italy onto panels provided by Beyond Gravity in Switzerland.

Designed and qualified to operate at temperatures between -100°C and +140°C, the panels will continue working even with the sun at its furthest distance, out beyond Mars orbit, where the spacecraft will receive only 17% of sunlight compared to a satellite orbiting Earth. In the phases of the mission in which Hera will be most distant, the solar panels will generate around 800 watts, equal to the energy needed to power a small microwave oven.

New research published ahead of print in the Journal of Applied Physiology suggests women lose more muscle than men in a microgravity environment such as spaceflight. The study "represent[s] the longest bed rest study on a large cohort of women" and underscores the need for more sex-specific studies on physiological responses to microgravity, the research team wrote.

Historically, only about 2 out of every 10 astronauts sent into space have been women. With NASA's decision to diversify crewmembers in future spaceflight missions, including the agency's intention to send the first woman to the moon in 2024, scientists are more interested than ever in discovering how biological sex plays a role in the physiological response to microgravity. However, existing literature on the female response to low-gravity environments is sparse.

The current study explored muscle loss (atrophy) in men and women during two extended bed rest trials. The men spent 90 days, and the women spent 60 days in a 6-degree head-down tilt position, where their head was below their feet.