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...
Solar plane batteries were damaged on the last journey from Japan to Hawaii and will take several months to repair. The aircraft will be kept at its Pacific stop-over at Kalaeloa airport while the maintenance is undertaken. Once plane repair finished, there will be some test flights before the global journey resumes in 2016, the team says. That is likely to be in April, and would see Solar Impulse fly from Hawaii to the West Coast of the US. It should then have a sizeable weather window to try to cross America, the Atlantic, and make its way back to Abu Dhabi, UAE, where the circumnavigation began in March this year.
The suspension will be a disappointment but the project has already met a number of its key objectives. Pilot Andre Borschberg smashed aviation records when he steered Solar Impulse from Nagoya to Kalaeloa at the beginning of the month. Flying just on the power of the Sun, he completed the 7,200km in 118 hours.
Engineers on the project have not been able to make the quick repairs that might allow Solar Impulse to have a crack at completing the round-the-world journey this year. The University of Hawaii and the US Department of Transportation have agreed to continue to host the aeroplane in a large hangar at Kalaeloa airport while the repair proceeds.
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