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...
The satellite, called the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), lifted off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan at 09:31 GMT. The probe will investigate whether the methane in the world's atmosphere is coming from a geological source or is being produced by microbes. If all goes well, the two space powers expect to follow up this venture with a rover, to be assembled in the UK, which will drill into the surface. That could launch in 2018, or, as seems increasingly likely, in 2020.It will take the carrier rocket more than 10 hours to put the satellite on the right trajectory to go to Mars. This involves a series of engine burns by the Proton's Breeze upper-stage to build up the velocity needed to break free of Earth's gravity. These will fling the TGO away from Earth with a relative velocity of 33,000km/h. The flight sequence is sure to strain the nerves of space agency officials. For Russia especially, the Red Planet represents a destination of wretched ...