The Swiss-made Solar Impulse 2 soared over the Statue of Liberty early Saturday morning, as it swooped into the city after taking off Friday night from Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.
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Photographers in NY harbour captured the innovative solar powered aircraft as it flew over the Verrazano Bridge, circled Lady Liberty and cruised the Manhattan skyline before turning south to land. The plane has travelled 18,540 miles since setting off from on the first leg of the trip from Abu Dhabi to Oman in March 2015, and has racked up nearly 390 hours of flight time.
The fifth and last stage of the solar plane’s flight across the US was full of symbolism, both for Borschberg and for the aircraft’s other Swiss inventor, Bertrand Piccard. “It’s to show what we can do with clean technologies”.
You can get flight updates and follow this historic flight around the world by going to the Solar Impulse website.
Solar Impulse 2 proves the enormous potential of solar-powered technology, according to Piccard.
The Solar Impulse 2 landed at JFK International Airport.
On April 24, Piccard landed in San Francisco, completing a trans-Pacific crossing after a almost three-day trip that began in Hawaii. It circled the statue in an exciting photoshoot that gave a closure to the United States portion of its effort to go around the globe with just solar power. During night flights like the one from Pennsylvania to NY, it runs on battery-stored power.
Surplus power is stored in four batteries during the day, to keep the plane aloft on extreme long-distance flights. He had completed the world’s first non-stop balloon flight around the globe in 1999. Solar Impulse is expected to return to Abu Dhabi in July or August 2016.
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In a precursor of their globe-circling quest, the two men completed a multi-flight crossing of the USA with an earlier version of the solar plane in 2013.
