A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said. The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website. Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...
A record-breaking attempt to fly around the world in a solar-powered plane has got under way from Abu Dhabi.
The aircraft - called Solar Impulse-2 - took off from the Emirate, heading east to Muscat in Oman.Over the next five months, it will skip from continent to
continent, crossing both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in the process.Andre Borschberg was at the controls of the single-seater vehicle as it took off. He will share the pilot duties in due course with fellow Swiss, Bertrand Piccard.
The plan is stop off at various locations around the globe, to rest and to carry out maintenance, and also to spread a campaigning message about clean technologies.
Before taking off, Borschberg told BBC News: "I am confident
we have a very special aeroplane, and it will have to be to get us
across the big oceans."
"We may have to fly for five days and five nights to do that, and it will be a challenge.
"But we have the next two months, as we fly the legs to China, to train and prepare ourselves."
The project has already set a number of world records for solar-powered flight, including making a high-profile transit of the US in 2013.
But the round-the-world venture is altogether more dramatic
and daunting, and has required the construction of an even bigger plane
than the prototype, Solar Impulse-1.
This new model has a wingspan of 72m, which is wider than a 747 jumbo jet. And yet, it weighs only 2.3 tonnes.
Its light weight will be critical to its success.
So, too, will the performance of the 17,000 solar cells that
line the top of the wings, and the energy-dense lithium-ion batteries it
will use to sustain night-time flying.
Operating through darkness will be particularly important when the men have to cross the Pacific and the Atlantic.
The slow speed of their prop-driven plane means these legs will take several days and nights of non-stop flying to complete.
Piccard and Borschberg - whoever is at the controls - will have to stay alert for nearly all of the time they are airborne.
They will be permitted only catnaps of up to 20 mins - in the
same way a single-handed, round-the-world yachtsman would catch small
periods of sleep.
They will also have to endure the physical discomfort of
being confined in a cockpit that measures just 3.8 cubic metres in
volume - not a lot bigger than a public telephone box.
Comments
Post a Comment