Pennsylvania is the penultimate stop in the United States before the Solar Impulse 2 plane will attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean from NY in a journey that could take up to a week.
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People told the Wright Brothers & us what we wanted to achieve was impossible.They were wrong! It was scheduled to fly from Dayton to the Lehigh Valley Tuesday morning, but project officials scrapped those plans late Monday night.
The plane is expected to make at least one more stop in the United States, in NY, before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Europe or northern Africa, according to the website documenting the journey.
Brightly-lighted against the night sky, the plane touched down in Dayton about 10 p.m. Saturday night.
The round-the-world journey began over a year ago in Abu Dhabi, the same place it could end this summer.
When part of the inflatable hangar on the Dayton airport’s tarmac collapsed, Borschberg was concerned.
This is not the first time that the Solar Impulse 2 has experienced damage.
Pilot Andre Borschberg piloted Solar Impulse 2 into Dayton from Tulsa, Okla., the 12th leg of the the trek about two-thirds completed.
It’s not a fast plane – it took 16 hours 34 minutes, an average ground speed of about 42 mph to reach Dayton from Tulsa – but it doesn’t burn a drop of aviation fuel.
The slow-moving, single-seat plane with the wingspan of a Boeing 747, contains 17,000 solar cells that power the aircraft s propellers and charge batteries.
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Borschberg set a new endurance record for the longest non-stop solo flight last July during a 118-hour trans-Pacific crossing, over five days and five nights, from Japan to Hawaii. “But if it was pressurized it would be too heavy”, Piccard said.
