Solar Powered Plane Proves It Works
“Solar Impulse”, a completely solar-powered airplane took off just before 5 am GMT, Wednesday from an airfield in Payerne, near Geneva. The plane set off to prove it could stay aloft for 24 hours, it flew 26.
Piloted by Andre Borschberg, the flight plan included altitudes between 5,000 and 28,000 feet with a dawn landing. The wingspan on this breakthrough innovation is 63 meters – rivaling the Airbus A340 and boats an array of solar cells numbering 12,000.
So why such a venture? The founder of the project, Bertrand Piccard, says the goal is to create a plane that can fly day and night on purely solar energy. Does the name sound familiar? Piccard piloted the first balloon to circumnavigate the globe in 1999. Four years later, the challenge to fly around the globe was announced, a long term aim of the project.
Because the flight was successful, the team can begin work on the next phase of the project, to develop the plane further so that it may fly much longer distances, across continents or oceans. If this phase is completed successfully, the team hopes to fly the Solar Impulse around the world in five stages in 2012.
