The plane, called solar Impulse 2, landed in Egypt
on July 13, after flying nonstop for nearly forty nine hours from Spain.
It was the second-to-ultimate leg of the aircraft's ambitious
spherical-the-global flight to sell renewable energy sources and spur the
improvement of "inexperienced" technologies.
The dramatic photographs of solar Impulse 2 hovering over
the pyramids provide a putting contrast among ancient and futuristic era, with
the solar-powered plane representing a manner that a few machines, which
includes airplanes, could be powered someday. [See more photos of the plane's
round-the-world flight]
"This changed into an emotional and meaningful leg for
me, being capable of experience another time the tremendous sensation of flying
day and night thank you simplest to the energy of the sun and enjoying fully
the existing moment," pilot André Borschberg, solar Impulse's co-founder and
CEO, who flew the plane from Spain to Egypt, stated in a assertion.
sun Impulse 2 is designed to fly day and night time with out
the use of any fuel. The single-seater aircraft is powered absolutely through
17,000 sun cells and onboard batteries, which rate in the course of the day to
allow the aircraft to fly constantly thru the night time and for the duration
of cloudy weather.
The ultralightweight plane weighs handiest 5,070 pounds
(2,three hundred kilograms), kind of equivalent to a vehicle, but has an
outstanding wingspan that stretches 236 feet (seventy two meters), according to
business enterprise officers.
Borschberg and his fellow co-founder, Bertrand Piccard, have
been alternating being at the controls of the sun plane for each leg of the
round-the-world adventure. Piccard is predicted to fly sun Impulse 2 on the
final leg of the excursion, from Egypt
to Abu Dhabi, in the United
Arab Emirates.
"This touchdown in Cairo
brings sun Impulse lower back to the origin of my dream," Piccard stated
in a statement. "Egypt
is the u . s . wherein I landed after my non-forestall spherical the world
balloon flight in 1999, and it is exactly here that I had the idea of an plane
flying round the world on sun power."
sun Impulse 2 launched into its adventure around the sector
in March 2015, commencing from Abu Dhabi's
Al Bateen executive Airport on a flight to Oman.
The plane next made stops in India, Myanmar, China and Japan before finishing a
record-breaking flight throughout the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii, inside the
u.s.a., in July 2015. The aircraft changed into then grounded in Hawaii
for nearly a 12 months due to the fact overheated batteries had brought about
irreversible harm to the aircraft.
The plane resumed its adventure in advance this yr, in
April, flying from Hawaii to California.
It then crossed the U.S.,
making stops in Arizona, Oklahoma,
Ohio, Pennsylvania
and ny. The plane have become the first solar-powered plane to cross the Atlantic
Ocean, after it flew from the big apple to Spain
in seventy one hours and eight minutes. If the subsequent and very last leg of
the excursion is successful, sun Impulse 2 turns into the primary solar-powered
aircraft to circumnavigate the globe.
In 2013, Borschberg and Piccard completed an exceptional
coast-to-coast flight across the united states,
the use of a first-era prototype of the solar Impulse plane. That two-month
adventure covered five stops among California
and ny.
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