Shady side of ATV

A rare view from behind of the solar wings built for ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle – the side that does not point at the Sun and is not covered in solar cells, a bright white to help proof it against corrosive atomic oxygen.

Here, an engineer at Dutch Space, down the road from ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, in nearby Leiden, is seen checking the hinges used to deploy ATV’s solar wings.