Solar Impulse 2 took to the air again this April, and flew to California, Arizona, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania and NY.
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The Aero-Club of Switzerland said the Solar Impulse 2 landed in Seville in southern Spain at 0540 GMT on Thursday, ending a 70-hour flight which began from New York City on Monday.
A larger version of a single-seat prototype that first flew six years ago, Solar Impulse 2 is made of carbon fiber and has 17,248 solar cells built into the wing that supply the plane with renewable energy, via four motors.
71 hours was the 15th leg of the round-the-world journey by the plane piloted in turns by Swiss aviators Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg.
The team, led by Piccard and French businessman André Borschberg, had originally meant to land the craft in Paris in an effort to replicate Charles Lindbergh’s historic 1927 flight path.
Piccard got little sleep during the near three-day journey, surviving on short catnaps.
Solar Impulse has moved rapidly around the Earth since renewing its challenge in Hawaii on April 21.
It was a “beautiful flight that has countlessly left Bertrand in awe at the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean – encountering oil tankers, islands, whales, icebergs, and an abundance of water”, the team said in a blog post on the Solar Impulse site.
After the Atlantic crossing, Piccard and his colleague can either make their way to Abu Dhabi with one more stop, as originally planned, or they could try to fly the rest of the way in one go.
Daylight solar rays charge the batteries so the plane can travel also at night, and flying altitudes vary so that energy can be conserved, with daytime cruising altitude close to 30,000 feet and night time travel around 5,000 feet high. If you were wondering whey the trips take so long, by our standards, consider that the plane typically has a top speed of just 48km/h, although pilots can achieve double that if there’s full sunlight. The “new” world is the world of modern clean technologies that can halve our global energy consumption, save natural resources and improve our quality of life.
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But the goal of the epic journey, Piccard added, “is not to change aviation, but to inspire people to use [renewable] technologies”.
