A flight across the Atlantic powered just by solar energy has touched down in Seville airport. It was the first solo transatlantic solar flight.
The journey of experimental Solar Impulse 2 took 70 hours after departure from New York, leaving its Swiss pilot with the option of just a few short catnaps in an unheated and unpressurised single seat cabin.
Bertrand Piccard (pictured above) was received with applause as the plane landed on Thursday morning. "I can't take it in, it is so fantastic," he reported to the mission control centre in Monaco.
It was the latest leg of a round-the-world 35,400-kilometre attempt which began in Abu Dhabi in March 2015. The goal is to shine a spotlight on renewable energy and technology.
The solar panels charge the batteries using day light, allowing the plane to fly at 29,000 feet. At night it descends to 5,000 feet to conserve power.
The plane flies at 48kph, but can go a double speed in full sunlight. Piccard said that Solar Impulse 2 could fly perpetually, but it is the pilot’s ability to endure which limits flying.
Piccard has alternated segments of the journey with another Swiss pilot, Andre Borschberg who has already completed the longest leg, 6,437 kilometrres over the Pacific from Japan to Hawaii. The 118-hour leg smashed the record for the longest uninterrupted journey in aviation history.
“Every minute is a minute of suspense, a minute of challenge, and the fact I can stay [airborne] without fuel or pollution for four days and four nights is something so new,” Piccard said. “I have the impression I am in a science fiction story and it’s like I am already in the future. And then I look outside and I say, well it’s not the future, it’s now.”
