Solar Impulse: The First Solar Powered Plane To Fly Over Night
Making a new milestone in the use of solar power, a Swiss team has made headlines when they flew for more than 26 hours straight in a solar powered plane.
This from <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6671WK20100708" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Aircraft completes first solar-powered night flight | Reuters</a>–
<blockquote>Solar Impulse, whose wingspan is the same as an Airbus A340, flew 26 hours and 9 minutes, powered only by solar energy stored during the day. It was also the longest and highest flight in the history of solar aviation, organizers said.</blockquote>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Piccard" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Bertrand Piccard</a>, known for his around the world trip in a hot air balloon in 1999 is the president of this project was quoted saying that the team is on the verge of perpetual flight.
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Image Credit: Reuters
The plane in itself is an engineering marvel, Solar Impulse HB-SIA is a giant glider-like aircraft powered by more than 12,000 solar cells. These cells have been built into the 193-foot wing-span, that around 64.3 meters. The plane weighs a meager 1600 kilos (that’s approximately the weight of a mid-sized car), and is powered by 4 electronic motors.
The real success factor behind the overnight flight is the high performance batteries, which store the energy from the solar power captured by the cells.
#-Link-Snipped-#shows us what this means for us –
<blockquote>The flight was part of the project’s 100 million Swiss franc ($95 million) effort sponsored by Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s biggest bank, to eventually pilot the first flight around the globe in an airplane using only solar energy.</blockquote>
The team is building more prototypes, to cross the Atlantic, then to circumnavigate the globe. The plane can currently do a maximum speed of 68 knots, and requires some work in this field before it can become commercially viable. But Piccard is confident of securing another 20 million Swiss francs ($19 million) for funding their project further. With years of improvement in carrying capacity and in speed, who knows maybe someday we will have the entire aviation industry on a greener and much cleaner energy source!
This from <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6671WK20100708" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Aircraft completes first solar-powered night flight | Reuters</a>–
<blockquote>Solar Impulse, whose wingspan is the same as an Airbus A340, flew 26 hours and 9 minutes, powered only by solar energy stored during the day. It was also the longest and highest flight in the history of solar aviation, organizers said.</blockquote>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Piccard" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Bertrand Piccard</a>, known for his around the world trip in a hot air balloon in 1999 is the president of this project was quoted saying that the team is on the verge of perpetual flight.
#-Link-Snipped-#
Image Credit: Reuters
The plane in itself is an engineering marvel, Solar Impulse HB-SIA is a giant glider-like aircraft powered by more than 12,000 solar cells. These cells have been built into the 193-foot wing-span, that around 64.3 meters. The plane weighs a meager 1600 kilos (that’s approximately the weight of a mid-sized car), and is powered by 4 electronic motors.
The real success factor behind the overnight flight is the high performance batteries, which store the energy from the solar power captured by the cells.
#-Link-Snipped-#shows us what this means for us –
<blockquote>The flight was part of the project’s 100 million Swiss franc ($95 million) effort sponsored by Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s biggest bank, to eventually pilot the first flight around the globe in an airplane using only solar energy.</blockquote>
The team is building more prototypes, to cross the Atlantic, then to circumnavigate the globe. The plane can currently do a maximum speed of 68 knots, and requires some work in this field before it can become commercially viable. But Piccard is confident of securing another 20 million Swiss francs ($19 million) for funding their project further. With years of improvement in carrying capacity and in speed, who knows maybe someday we will have the entire aviation industry on a greener and much cleaner energy source!
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