Solar Impulse 2 nears end of around-the-world journey
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029955
BBC : After traveling more than a year and making some 15 stops, the solar-powered aircraft Solar Impulse 2 is about to complete its circumnavigation of the globe. The stops allow André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, the two men piloting the single-seat craft, to take turns flying. On 11 July Borschberg took off from Seville, Spain, to make the plane’s penultimate flight to Cairo, Egypt. Piccard will fly the final leg, returning Solar Impulse to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where it originally took off in March 2015. The trip has taken longer than planned because during the plane’s record-setting flight over the Pacific Ocean from Japan to Hawaii in June 2015, the plane’s batteries overheated and needed to be repaired.
