Solar aircraft pioneers transatlantic crossing

The Solar Impulse team hopes the flight will promote the potential of green energy technology

The solar-powered aircraft Solar Impulse 2 has set another world record, completing the first solar, electric and zero-emission crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.

The ‘perpetual endurance’ plane began its 22,000-mile (35,400km) round-the-world trip in early March 2015, but suffered setbacks owing to inclement weather and repairs and replacements for its batteries, which overheated during a flight from Nagoya to Hawaii in July 2015.

Pilot Bertrand Piccard landed Solar Impulse 2 at Seville Airport on 23 June, after a historic flight of three days and three nights that took off from New York – completing the first electric, solar and emission-free transatlantic flight while breaking several world records. Those include distance and altitude in the electric aircraft category as well as distance along a pre-declared route in the solar aircraft category.

Built from carbon fibre, the single-seater aircraft has a 72m wingspan, larger than that of a Boeing 747, and weighs just 2,300kg – equivalent to a standard family car. The 17,000 solar cells built into its fuselage supply the sole power for the four electric motors (17.5hp each) that can take the plane to speeds between 30 and 60mph (48 and 97km/h).

The Solar Impulse team hopes the flight will promote the potential of green energy technology. Piccard said: “The Atlantic has always revealed the transitions between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ worlds. Today the old world is inefficient polluting devices while the new world is clean technologies.Our aim is to inspire the adoption of clean technologies.”

The mission will now continue onward to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, where the round-the-world flight started.