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...
He wants pupils to plant rocket seeds that have been in orbit with him, and compare their growth with rocket plants that have stayed on Earth. Mr Peake has outlined details of the project in a message from the space station which will be sent to schools. The study will help find ways to grow food in space which will be essential if humans travel to distant planets. In his message, the European Space Agency (Esa) astronaut explains that he will be sending more than a million seeds back to Earth in a month's time. "Conditions here on the International Space Station are quite different from on planet Earth, due to us being weightless here in orbit." In his hands are a bag of seeds which occasionally float away. Unperturbed, he gently pulls them back towards him and continues."This experiment will aim to see if microgravity can affect the growth mechanisms in seeds," he adds. The seeds will be distributed to up to 10,000 schools. Pupils will compare the gro...