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 team of Nasa recruits has begun living in a dome near a barren volcano in Hawaii to simulate what life would be like on Mars. The isolation experience, which will last a year starting on Friday, will be the longest of its type attempted. Experts estimate that a human mission to the Red Planet could take between one and three years. The six-strong team will live in close quarters under the dome, without fresh air, fresh food or privacy. They closed themselves away at 15:00 local time on Friday (01:00 GMT Saturday).
A journey outside the dome - which measures only 36ft (11m) in
diameter and is 20ft (6m) tall - will require a spacesuit. A French astrobiologist, a German physicist and four Americans - a pilot, an architect, a journalist and a soil scientist - make up the Nasa team.The men and women will each have a small sleeping cot and a desk inside their rooms. Provisions include powdered cheese and canned tuna.
Missions to the International Space Station last six months. The US space agency has recently conducted four-month and eight-month-long isolation experiments. While others focus on the technical and scientific challenges of the journey, the isolation experiments address the human element of exploration and problems that arise living in tight quarters.
"I think one of the lessons is that you really can't prevent interpersonal conflicts. It is going to happen over these long-duration missions, even with the very best people," said Kim Binsted, a Nasa investigator.
source: bbcnews
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