The sun-powered airplane Solar Impulse 2 successfully completed its first flight on Monday in Switzerland, one year before its planned trip around the world, the project team said.
The project’s Swiss initiators, the pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, plan the first solar-powered circumnavigation of the earth.
On Monday, a test pilot flew the aircraft for two hours and 17 minutes at altitudes of up to 2,400 metres, starting and landing at the Payerne military airport in western Switzerland.
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The initial results were in line with previous calculations and simulations, the team said.
Solar Impulse 2 has a wingspan of 72 metres, which makes it wider than a jumbo jet. It weighs only 2.3 tons, around the same as an automobile.
It is equipped with more than 17,200 solar cells that power four propellers.
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The concept was tested last year, when Mr. Piccard and Mr. Borschberg took turns flying from San Francisco to New York over several days in the predecessor model to Solar Impulse 2.
The new aircraft was built so that it could theoretically fly around the world in one go.
“It is the first aircraft that will have almost unlimited endurance,” Mr. Borschberg said.
However, Mr. Piccard, Mr. Borschberg and other pilots are planning to take turns to make the 20-day trip in several legs starting March next year.
They plan to take off from the Persian Gulf and fly eastward over India, China, the Pacific Ocean, the United States and North Africa.
Mr. Piccard has said the project does not aim to replace normal passenger planes with solar-powered ones, but to prove that mankind could use much less energy with existing technologies.