Aviation history is made
Bertrand Piccard made one last smooth landing, kissing the warm tarmac with his solar airplane after a 48 hour and 37 minute flight in Al Bateen Executive Airport, Abu Dhabi. He took off from Cairo, Egypt at 11:28PM UTC, 7:28PM EDT on July 23rd / 1:28AM CEST on July 24th and landed in Abu Dhabi at 12:05AM UTC, 2:05AM CEST on July 26th / 8:05PM EDT on July 25th. The solar airplane Solar Impulse has now successfully made it full circle around the world, proving that clean technologies can really achieve the impossible.
Solar Impulse is 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 engineer and businessman André Borschberg and Swiss psychiatrist and aeronaut Bertrand Piccard, who co-piloted Breitling Orbiter 3, the first balloon to circle the world non-stop. The Solar Impulse project's goals were to make the first circumnavigation of the Earth by a piloted fixed-wing aircraft using only solar power and to bring attention to clean technologies.
This flight represents the most incredible wrap-up of this adventure. With André Borschberg joining his engineers one last time at the Mission Control Centre in Monaco for the first half of the flight and Bertrand Piccard piloting the revolutionary solar airplane to the finish line.
The next stage is to develop an unmanned version of the craft to operate at high altitudes as an aerial basestation similar to Facebook's Aquila UAV. The prototype of the Solar Impulse version, supported by ABB and Solvay, is planned for 2019.
