The Swiss-made solar airplane Solar Impulse 2 landed Saturday in Dayton, Ohio, the birthplace of aviation, during its bid to fly around the globe fueled only by the sun.
The Solar Impulse 2 landed in Dayton, the home base of aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright, at about 10 p.m. Saturday after a 17-hour flight,
Reuters reported.
"People told the Wright Brothers and us what we wanted to achieve was impossible," said Bertrand Piccard, a frequent pilot of the plane. "They were wrong!"
Piccard and Andre Borschberg are taking turns piloting the aircraft, which is powered by 17,000 solar cells that are built into its wings and four batteries that store excess energy for nighttime flight. Borschberg piloted the leg from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Dayton, Ohio, which was the twelfth leg of the journey.
"It’s in this mythical place for aviation history that André Borschberg landed Solar Impulse 2 after 17 hours of flight from Tulsa, Oklahoma,"
the team said on its blog. "This flight was symbolic for him not only because of Dayton, but also because 89 years ago, Charles Lindbergh accomplished his transatlantic flight from New York to Paris with the Spirit of St Louis."
The aircraft began its planned 21,000-mile journey from Abu Dhabi in March 2015,
The Dayton Daily News reported.
The plane's 236-foot long wingspan exceeds that of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. But its carbon fiber construction keeps its weight light.
The pilots and their team of about 100 people supporting the journey have faced difficulties along the way,
CNN reported. Bad weather delayed the flight for weeks in China. Later, a storm damaged the aircraft in Japan.
The most arduous leg of the trip was from Japan to Hawaii, where the plane landed in July after almost five days and nights of nonstop flight, CNN said. During that leg, the batteries overheated, causing damage that took nine months to fix.
The pilots will fly to New York and then cross the Atlantic Ocean before arriving at their destination in the Middle East by late summer, if all goes according to plan.
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