Those aren't solar panels sticking out the stern-- at least, not the sort that the ISS sports.  They're actually mirrors to catch the Sun's rays to power a tiny mercury boiler to generate electricity.

When Werner Von Braun et al presented their plan for a future space programme in Colliers magazine they realised that it wasn't a matter of leaping straight to Mars.  Space was a new frontier about which very little was known and therefore it had to be approached cautiously. 

This "baby space station" was intended as man's first toe-dip into the ocean of space.  Fitted  as the nosecone of its booster rocket, the Colliers satellite  would unfurl itself in orbit as a miniature robot laboratory.

Inside, we can see that this wasn't just an instrument package, but carried passengers as well.  In this case, it's a pair of extremely irate monkeys sent up to determine the effects of weightlessness on future astronauts.

The monkeys would have been even more irate if they'd known beforehand how this proto space station was intended to end its mission

Very irate.

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