The pilot also climbed to 29,000 feet during the day and glided down to 5,000 feet at night, to conserve power. The airplane exclusively operates on what is deemed “clean energy”.
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In a statement this week, Borschberg said it is no longer a question of whether it’s possible to fly without fuel or polluting emissions. “All this can be used now on the ground”, dividing “by two the energy consumption and therefore the Carbon dioxide emissions of the world”, Piccard said.
The ground crew, who had dragged the plane out to the tarmac with ropes, cheered as it lifted off and disappeared into the night.
Swiss explorers Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, Solar Impulse founders and pilots, took turns piloting the aircraft with a wingspan larger than a Boeing 747 and weighing only as much as a family vehicle.
After that record-breaking flight, damage it caused to the plane’s battery delayed the project until the plane resumed its flight in April.
Swiss explorer and project director Bertrand Piccard was in the cockpit during the 2,763 kilometre (1,716 mile) flight from Cairo.
No heavier than a vehicle but with the wingspan of a Boeing 747, the four-engine, battery-powered aircraft relies on around 17,000 solar cells embedded in its wings. During night-time flights it runs on battery-stored power.
In May, Solar Impulse 2 landed at Dayton International Airport. Prominent global organisations such as the UN, UNFCCC and UNEP have been participating in the campaign.
Solar Impulse completed its circumnavigation of the globe using only solar energy after what proved to be the one of the journey’s most hard legs, as pilot Bertrand Piccard had to battle turbulence throughout the flight. “It is a much more demanding and exhausting flight”, he said.
“Technically it’s close to the limits that we have set in terms of temperature, so that’s something which we did not experience before”, he said via Skype from mission control in Monaco.
“But with the temperature profile that we see over the coming days, we should be all fine”. The plane made 16 stops, including in Dayton, India, China, the U.S., Italy, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates – where it first took off.
On Monday, Masdar chief executive spoke to Mr Piccard, telling him that Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, “has been following up on all steps taken since the departure of Solar Impulse from Abu Dhabi, and he sends you his best regards and welcomes you back to Abu Dhabi”.
“Today, we are living the final moments of a once in a lifetime adventure contributing to setting a new milestone in aviation, one centred not on speed or height, but instead on exploring new clean and efficient technologies that can nearly make it possible for the plane to fly with unlimited endurance, a week, a month, something that was never done”, said Andre Borschberg, the project’s co-founder and co-pilot.
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The solar plane had arrived in Cairo on July 13 after a flight from Seville, Spain.
