A solar airplane that developers hope to eventually pilot around the globe landed safely in Texas, completing the second and longest leg of an attempt to fly across the US powered only by the sun.
The current plane was designed for flights of up to 24 hours at a time
The spindly experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse, touched down at Dallas/Forth Worth International Airport, logging 18 hours and 21 minutes in the air to cover 823 nautical miles from Arizona.
The flight set a new absolute world distance record in solar aviation, organisers said.
Solar Impulse, which flies at an average pace of just 69 km/h, began its cross-country sojourn on May 3 with an 18-hour-plus flight from northern California to Phoenix.
After additional stops in St Louis and Washington, DC, pausing at each destination to wait for favourable weather, the flight team hopes to conclude the plane’s voyage at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in early July.
Swiss pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, the co-founders of the project, are taking turns flying the plane, which has a single-seat cockpit.
Piccard piloted the first leg from California to Arizona, and Borschberg flew the second stretch to Texas.
“This leg was particularly challenging because of fairly strong winds at the landing,” Borschberg said in a statement released after the flight. He already held the record for the longest-duration flight in a solar-powered plane – 26 hours.
The Solar Impulse project began in 2003 with a 10-year budget of €90 million and has involved engineers from Swiss escalator maker Schindler and research aid from Belgian chemicals group Solvay – backers that want to test new materials and technologies while also gaining brand recognition.
Project organisers say the journey is also intended to boost worldwide support for the adoption of clean-energy technologies.
With the wingspan of a jumbo jet and the same weight as a small car, the Solar Impulse is a test model for a more advanced aircraft the team plans to build to circumnavigate the globe in 2015. The plane made its first intercontinental flight, from Spain to Morocco, last June.
The aircraft runs on about the same power as a motor scooter, propelled by energy collected from 12,000 solar cells built into the wings that simultaneously recharge batteries with a storage capacity equivalent to an electric car.
In that way, the Solar Impulse can fly after dark on solar energy generated during daylight hours. It is the first solar-powered aircraft capable of operating day and night without fuel to attempt a US coast-to-coast flight.
Just as the plane is unlikely to set any speed record, it is also unlikely to set any altitude record. It can climb gradually to 28,000 feet.