Solar Impulse and Solar Impulse 2- The Beginning of a New Aviation History
Solar Impulse is the name of a Swiss long-range experimental solar-powered aircraft project, and also the name of the project’s two operational aircraft. The privately-financed project is led by Swiss businessman André Borschberg and Swiss psychiatrist and aeronaut Bertrand Piccard, who co-piloted the first balloon to circle the world non-stop. The Solar Impulse project intends to achieve the first circumnavigation of the Earth by a piloted fixed-wing aircraft using only solar power.
The prototype aircraft, bearing the Swiss aircraft registration code HB-SIA and often referred to as Solar Impulse 1, is a single-seat monoplane powered by photovoltaic cells and capable of taking off under its own power. It is designed to remain airborne up to 36 hours.The aircraft conducted its first test flight in December 2009. In July 2010, it flew an entire diurnal solar cycle, including nearly nine hours of night flying, in a 26-hour flight.Piccard and Borschberg completed successful solar-powered flights from Switzerland to Spain and then Morocco in 2012, and conducted a multi-stage flight across the United States in 2013.
Solar Impulse 2, world’s first solar-powered aircraft is on its journey around the world. It has made stopovers at Ahmedabad and Varanasi in India and is on its way to Mynamar’s Mandalay. Here is all the important information you would want to know about it.
Solar Impulse 2 is the name of the Swiss long-range experimental solar powered aircraft project as well as of the operational aircraft, which is set achieve the first round-the-world solar powered trip. The aircraft is capable of flying five consecutive days without any fuel. It started its journey to circumnavigate the globe this month from Abu Dhabi and is scheduled to return there in August, 2015. The more than 17,000 solar cells in the aircraft work with the four motorcycle-type engines and power the aircraft to fly at speeds of 36kmph to 140kmph.
The first attempt to fly a plane round the world using only solar power. It’s not a non-stop flight, the plane stops in different countries.