{"id":798688,"date":"2025-10-09T04:07:31","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T09:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=798688"},"modified":"2025-10-09T04:07:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T09:07:31","slug":"esa-plato-spreads-its-wings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=798688","title":{"rendered":"ESA &#8211; Plato spreads its wings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"modal__tab-content--details\">\n<div class=\"modal__tab-description\">\n<p>By fitting its sunshield and solar panels, engineers\u00a0recently\u00a0completed the construction of\u00a0Plato, the European Space Agency\u2019s mission to discover Earth-like exoplanets.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>After mounting the combined sunshield and solar\u00a0array\u00a0module, engineers tested whether it could\u00a0unfold\u00a0correctly.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This video features\u00a0this\u00a0deployment\u00a0test,\u00a0as it\u00a0took place\u00a0in a dedicated cleanroom\u00a0at\u00a0ESA\u2019s Test Centre.<\/p>\n<p>In space, special mechanisms will automatically release the panels from their folded position. For this test, the array was\u00a0released manually by an engineer. The opening of the left and right wings\u00a0was executed separately. Their deployment went as expected.<\/p>\n<p>Once in orbit, the solar\u00a0array\u00a0will catch light from the Sun to power the spacecraft electronics. The sunshield will keep the scientific equipment in shadow,\u00a0protecting it from the Sun\u2019s glare.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\t\t\t<label style=\"display: block; font-size: 0.9em; color: #8197A6; margin: 3rem 0 -1rem 0;\">Embed code<\/label><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<textarea rows=\"4\" cols=\"60\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Plato spreads its wings\" width=\"1110\" height=\"624\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YBP24RP9QSI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/textarea><\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Videos\/2025\/10\/Plato_spreads_its_wings?rand=772187\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By fitting its sunshield and solar panels, engineers\u00a0recently\u00a0completed the construction of\u00a0Plato, the European Space Agency\u2019s mission to discover Earth-like exoplanets.\u00a0 After mounting the combined sunshield and solar\u00a0array\u00a0module, engineers tested whether&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":798689,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-798688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=798688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/798689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=798688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=798688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=798688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}