Solar Impulse is a Swiss long-range solar-powered aircraft project. It is led by Swiss psychiatrist and aeronaut Bertrand Piccard, who co-piloted the first balloon to circle the world non-stop, and Swiss businessman André Borschberg. The privately financed project hopes to achieve the first circumnavigation of the Earth by a piloted fixed-wing aircraft using only solar power.
The first aircraft, bearing Swiss aircraft registration HB-SIA and often referred to as Solar Impulse 1, is a single-seat monoplane, capable of taking off under its own power, and designed to be able to remain airborne up to 36 hours. This aircraft conducted its first test flight in December 2009, and first flew an entire diurnal solar cycle, including nearly nine hours of night flying, in a 26-hour flight on 7–8 July 2010. Piccard and Borschberg completed successful solar-powered flights from Switzerland to Spain and Morocco in 2012, and conducted a multi-stage flight across the USA in 2013.
Building on the experience of the prototype, a slightly larger follow-on design, designated HB-SIB and known as Solar Impulse 2, was built and first flown in 2014. In March 2015, it began a circumnavigation of the globe, leaving from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and scheduled to return there five months later.
Bertrand Piccard (born 1 March 1958) is a Swiss psychiatrist and balloonist.
Born in Lausanne, Vaud canton, Bertrand Piccard, along with Brian Jones, was the first to complete a non-stop balloon flight around the globe. His grandfather Auguste Piccard was a balloonist and his father, Jacques Piccard an undersea explorer. He is currently trying to perform the first round-the-world solar flight, where he is the Initiator, Chairman and Pilot.
Source: Wikipedia
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