Solar Impulse has completed a world tour

Solar Impulse

World Tour "solar aircraft» Solar Impulse 2 completed successfully. Two hours ago, the aircraft sat in Abu Dhabi city, from which began the circumnavigation. Since March 2015 the aircraft crossed 42 thousand kilometers, flying over two oceans and three seas. Its solar panels have generated 11,000 kWh of electricity. During the flight Solar Impulse 2 has set 19 world records.

Let us remember what happened with the project this year.

Piloted plane solar-powered Solar Impulse made its first flight on April 7, 2010 in Switzerland. Polutoratonny wingspan unit 63, meter 5 for two hours was in the sky, its four electric motors using the solar energy from twelve thousand solar cells on the wings. Already next year the aircraft flew from Switzerland to Belgium for thirteen hours, having made his first international tour. In 2013, the solar plane completed the flight across the continental United States, breaking five thousand kilometers with several landings.


Already published a video installation of landing in Abu Dhabi.

The plane put all new records, but designers and pilots that was not enough: they collected Solar Impulse 2, increasing the wingspan of up to 72 meters and weight up to 2, 3 tons, the number of solar cells up to 17 248, and the speed - from 50 to 140 km / h . That this aircraft had to travel around the world.



The new version of the aircraft successfully completed its first flight in June 2014. In preparation for the world tour by representatives of the project Giktayms answered readers' questions, told about the flight schedule, "chips" glider, which uses the aircraft, the daily routine of pilots, technical specifications and other important facts.



January 9, 2015 Solar Impulse 2 dismantled in Switzerland, into several parts and delivered in Abu Dhabi using Boeing 747. This city was the starting point for a journey of seventeen flights, filled with adventure and danger.



January 20, 2015 Solar Impulse team has published the route of the world tour. He planned to start on 1 March. The path should take between 4 to 6 months, are in the air the plane had to spend 25 days and cover a distance of 35 000 kilometers. The route is strongly dependent on the weather conditions and the geopolitical situation in some regions. The weather and the technical condition of the aircraft closely followed the Mission Control Center in Monaco, where specialists twice a day counted all travel options.





The journey began March 9, 2015. The moment of truth for the whole team began a five-day flight across the Pacific Ocean at a distance of 8000 kilometers from China's Nanjing to the US Hawaii. Windows for this flight the plane was waiting for a few weeks. Unfortunately, the flight carried out not on the first try - the plane made an emergency landing in the Japanese city of Nagoya. Even in Hawaii because of the broken panels plane was delayed for several months - until the spring of 2016

. The second phase of the flight across the Pacific Ocean ended April 23, 2016, when the plane landed in San Francisco Bay. There he met Sergey Brin.

Successful landing for # Si2 in California, completing Pacific crossing. CONGRATS @bertrandpiccard @andreborschberg! pic.twitter.com/BDzJN4EDwg- SOLAR IMPULSE (@solarimpulse) April 24, 2016 g.Samolёtom in turn ruled Bertrand Piccard, Swiss psychiatrist and balloonist in the third generation, and Andre Borshberg, a military pilot. While one of the pilots was at the helm, he reached the second place of the next landing of the aircraft in another way.

Pilots had to work under very difficult conditions. Volume unheated cockpit was 3, 8 cubic meters - a little more than a phone booth. It was difficult to sleep in these conditions. We came to the aid of yoga and self-hypnosis to quickly enter the phase of deep sleep - so the pilot slept several times a day for 15-20 minutes

. But the food - 11 meals a day, with one intake of hot food, especially for the project developed by eight scientists from Nestle. In suhpayki includes bottled water and Nescafe coffee. Food weight per day was 1, 8 kilograms of energy - 3, 5 thousand calories. The mass of the entire consignment, which takes on board the pilot, including oxygen tanks, should not exceed 30 kilograms.







For those who want to feel the atmosphere of a little flight to the Solar Impulse, the team prepared a 360-degree video of the cockpit and outside flights Seville - Cairo, the penultimate stage of the journey.



July 24, 2016 the plane running Bertrand Piccard took off from Cairo airport to complete the last part of the seventeenth round trip voyage around the world and sit in the Abu Dhabi airport where the journey started. July 26 aircraft successfully landed.



Solar Impulse project is intended to spur development in various fields for the use of alternative environmentally-friendly forms of energy. When it seemed impossible to take off the machine heavier than air - but the Wright brothers proved otherwise. Just a few years ago it seemed nonsense that the aircraft can fly without a single drop of fuel - and Solar Impulse 2 prove to everyone that you can not just up in the air, but also travel around the world in several stages, the longest of which took five days of continuous flight. In his speech at the Forum "Open Innovation" in October 2014, Bertrand Piccard said: "Yuri Gagarin made his flight when everyone thought it impossible. Let us together to achieve impossible goals! »

Source: geektimes.ru/post/278814/