What is so special about Solar Impulse 2?
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Solar Impluse 2 is powered by 17,248 solar cells that transfer energy to four electrical motors to drive the plane’s propeller.
Right now the Solar Impulse aircraft is over the Persian Gulf, approaching Abu Dhabi, its final destination. From the cockpit of the Solar Impulse 2, Piccard called on everyone to see the round-the-world journey as a call to action.
The solar plane had arrived in Cairo on July 13 after a flight from Seville, Spain.
The carbon fibre plane, with a wingspan exceeding that of a Boeing 747 and the weight of a family vehicle, can climb to about 8,500 metres and cruise at 55 to 100 km/h. It is the largest aircraft ever built with such a low weight. There are oxygen, food and water reserves on board.
Swiss explorers Bertrand Piccard & André 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 auto. At 8:05 pm EDT (July 26 00:05 GMT), the single-seater experimental aircraft alighted on the tarmac of Al Bateen Executive Airport outside the capital of the United Arab Emirates with Bertrand Piccard at the controls, bringing to an end the historic solar-powered voyage.
The solar plane cost 2 million from the start of the project in 2003 until mid-2015, and has faced repeated financial difficulties.
The flight capped a remarkable 42,000km journey across four continents, two oceans and three seas.
The plane was scheduled to return to Abu Dhabi in August 2015, but met some delays on the way – the most serious one caused by too much sun.
Bertrand Piccard was the pilot who steered the aircraft home for its final voyage, after having shared the duties with Swiss compatriot Andre Borschberg since the initial departure on March 9 a year ago.
Piccard and Andre Borschberg took a behind-the-scenes tour at Carillon Historical Park and Hawthorn Hill, Orville Wright’s Oakwood mansion. The cockpit was tiny and cramped – but worst of all, it wasn’t heated. Piccard has alternated pilot duties with his friend and business partner Andre Borschberg. In 1999, he became the first person to circumnavigate the globe non-stop in a hot air balloon.
He trained as a Swiss army pilot, learning to fly a range of jets and other aircraft, and in his spare time racked up other professional fixed wing and helicopter licences and practised aerobatics.
“We have enough solutions, enough technologies”. They have been working on the project, which aims to promote clean energy technology, for over 10 years.
“We have new insulation material, new LED lamps, we have new extremely light carbon fiber structures”.
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Piccard, who initiated the project 12 years ago, said that Egypt was where he first began thinking of making a circumnavigation using only solar power.
