New Solar Impulse record

Solar Impulse completed the intercontinental flight from Madrid to Rabat (the capital of Morocco).

The plane took off from Madrid and landed in the Moroccan capital at 02.30 am Wednesday, Moscow time, covering a distance of more than 2.5 thousand kilometers. During the flight from the Spanish capital to Rabat, the creator of Solar Impulse - Bertrand Piccard took control of the aircraft. Earlier, on May 24, an unusual plane took off from the Swiss village of Payern and the next day made a planned technical landing in the capital of Spain, all this time it was operated by another designer, Andre Borshberg. The flight began in Switzerland on 12 May. During this time, the plane stayed in the air for almost 48 hours.







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A bit of history

On March 1, 1999, Piccard and Bryan Jones flew a balloon (propane engine) "Breitling Orbiter 3" from Chateau d'Et in Switzerland. They landed in Egypt after 45755 km of flight, the flight lasted 19 days, 21 hours and 47 minutes. For this, they got the Harmon Trophy. It was then that Bertrand asked himself: is it possible to go around the Earth without fuel at all?

He managed to infect a lot of people with his idea. In the team of enthusiasts who supported the idea of ​​a “solar plane”, in addition to scientists and engineers, there are honorary participants, say, writer Paulo Coelho, great-grandson of the famous science fiction writer Jean Verne, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel and many sponsors who gathered for the implementation of the project about 70 million euros.

On June 26, 2009, Piccard introduced the first model of the aircraft with Andre Borschberg, and on December 3 of that same year, he took off for the first time from the ground. The first test flight was designed to test the ability of the machine to at least stay in the air. Therefore, test-pilot Marcus Sherdel did not raise the device above one meter above the strip of the airfield. The flight distance was 350 meters, the duration - only 30 seconds. But this is a great holiday for people who were on their first flight for six years.

July 7-8, 2010 SI made the first 26-hour flight. The plane, piloted by Andre Borshberg, took off at 8:51 am Moscow time from an airfield in Payerne, Switzerland. He returned to the airfield the next morning at 11:00 am local time. The maximum flight altitude is 8700 m, a record for solar-powered aircraft.

On May 13, 2011, Solar Impulse completed its first 13-hour international flight from Switzerland to Belgium.

On May 24, 2012, SI landed safely in Madrid from Switzerland. The flight lasted about 17 hours. Everything went very well and, thanks to a team of meteorologists (in the first part of the night Andre lost the height he had gained in the evening a little bit faster than expected, but the intervention of the meteorologist Bruno Nayninger, who told Andre the picture of the air currents, allowed the pilot to find the upward flow and compensate for the descent), all went according to plan.

Well, actually, today Solar Impulse completed the first intercontinental flight.





This is not the first or even the second manned solar-powered aircraft in the world. However, so far only one “Impulse” managed to combine in itself both at the same time. Only unmanned vehicles on solar cells and batteries flew more than a day for the flight, and the manned vehicles with “solar wings” still could not remain in the air without light.

Bertrand's plans include a world tour, for which he tries to reduce the weight of the batteries so that the co-pilot can fit in the plane. Round the world scheduled for 2014.







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