While not the first solar plane, the team say Solar Impulse is the first to “fly day and night, without any fuel, only using energy stored in its batteries”. Those comments echo ones made by Piccard to Reuters before the start of the 17th and final leg, in which he noted that while “the round the world flight ends in Abu Dhabi”, that the project’s core mission – promoting “clean technologies around the world” – was far from over.
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Throughout the voyage Piccard took turns at the controls with Swiss compatriot Andre Borschberg.
“By flying around the world thanks to renewable energy and clean technologies, we have demonstrated that we can now make our world more energy efficient”, he said.
Piccard – who in 1999 was the first person to go round the world non-stop in a hot air balloon – expressed pride that they had proved the impossible was doable: “When you simply break a record, you just beat someone who has already done it, you try to do better, but you know the thing is possible. United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon was talking to the pilot while he was still in the cockpit”, Mr Lennon said. “And that is what the world needs”. “It’s to show what we can do with clean technologies”.
The longest leg of the journey was an 8,924km flight from Nagoya in Japan to Hawaii in the US – it lasted almost 118 hours and broke the absolute world record for the longest solo flight without a break. 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 in its wings. The wing had to be as light as possible while providing the lift needed at a cruising speed of around 90 kph.
The pilots used oxygen tanks to breathe at high altitude and wore suits specially created to cope with the extreme conditions. “This is why it’s very important to understand that [it’s] more than achievements for the history of aviation, it’s a success for the history of energy”, Piccard said.
“It was all consuming, it has pretty much taken over my life for the past five years”. The longest trip was between Japan and Hawaii, lasting almost five days. But Si2 was grounded in July past year when its batteries suffered problems halfway through the trip.
– The project has also been beset by bad weather and illness, which forced Piccard to delay the final leg.
On Monday, the Masdar Chief Executive spoke to Mr. Piccard, telling him that His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE 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”.
“The problem with our society is that, despite all the grand talk about sustainable development, we are a long way from making use of the clean technologies that are already available to us”. “The biggest challenge is to have an airplane that can fly perpetually, days and nights without refuelling, because there is no fuel”.
Prince Albert II of Monaco, Doris Leuthard, Vice President of the Swiss Confederation, and Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of State and Chairman of Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company and official host partner of Si2, led the welcoming committee of global dignitaries and VIPs. Solar Impulse 2, the culmination of 12 years of research and experimentation, is an engineering triumph capable of flying non-stop, day and night, powered exclusively by solar energy and limited only by the pilot’s endurance. “The ball is rolling!”
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Instead, the two pilots made numerous stops along their journey, so there is still room for someone else to set a record for the first solar-powered non-stop flight around the world. It’s still a little bit like in a dream. “This is a historic day for Captain Piccard and the Solar Impulse team, but it is also a historic day for humanity”, said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a call to Piccard in the cockpit of Solar Impulse 2 a few hours before landing.
