Solar Plane: Solar Impulse Landed Successfully
Written by David Delano on Thursday, July 8th, 2010A solar plane might just be the plane of the future. The safe landing of an experimental solar plane last Thursday could probably start the modern revolution for how airplanes are designed and where they get their power.
The solar-powered plane known as Solar Impulse landed onto the runway at Payerne airfield about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southwest of the Swiss capital Bern at exactly 9 a.m. (0700 GMT; 3 a.m. EDT) Thursday.
Solar Impulse completed its first 24-hours test flight and that includes 12-hours of flight during the night which proved that the plane can sustain power even after daytime.
Pilot Andre Borschberg and his team completed the final stage of the plan which had been done for seven years and create a possibility of developing mass produced solar plane. The Swiss-led project led to a plane which has a massive 207-foot (63-meter) wingspan and had the capacity for a single passenger.
The first working solar plane contains batteries using 12,000 solar cells and nothing but the rays of the sun during the day.
“The goal is to take to the air with no fuel. The goal is to show that we can be much more independent from fossil energy than people usually think,” explained Bertrand Piccard, the Solar Impulse chief.
Here is a brief video on one of the solar plane’s test landing.
