SOLAR IMPLULSE 2: HIGH ON SUNLIGHT

While Solar Impulse’s ability to fly while the sun shone was undoubted, its batteries had to store enough energy to keep the four propellers spinning through the dark night-time hours

- JOSEPH NORONHA

ON JULY 26, 2016, SOLAR IMPULSE 2 LANDED IN ABU DHABI to cheering crowds. After 14 months of travel and 550 hours in the air, the Swiss long-range experimental solar-powered aircraft had accomplished what many experts had deemed impossible: flying 40,000 km around the Earth – including over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – without a drop of liquid fuel. Flown alternately by Swiss engineer and businessman André Borschberg, and Swiss psychiatrist and balloonist Bertrand Piccard, it completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth by a piloted fixed-wing aircraft using only the sun’s vibrant rays to power its four electric motors.