Pilot sets off on first solar-powered intercontinental trip
SPAIN: A Swiss adventurer took off Tuesday into the night
skies above Madrid and headed for Rabat on the world's first
intercontinental flight in a solar-powered plane.
Bertrand Piccard, 54-year-old psychiatrist and balloonist, piloted
the Solar Impulse plane, a giant as big as an Airbus A340 but as light
as an average family car, on the daring voyage from Europe to Africa.
He guided the experimental plane almost silently aloft from
Madrid-Barajas airport at 5:22 am (0322 GMT).
As sun rose, an onboard camera relayed pictures of the sun-bathed
valleys south of the Spanish capital stretched out below the aircraft,
which has 12,000 solar cells in the wings turning four electrical
motors.
“For one hour I had the full moon on my right and I had the sunrise
on my left and that was absolutely gorgeous. I had all the colours of
the rainbow in the sky and also on the ground,” Piccard told AFP in an
interview from the cockpit.
“The question is not to use solar power for normal airplanes,” he
added.
“The question is more to demonstrate that we can achieve incredible
goals, almost impossible goals with new technologies, without fuel, just
with solar energy, and raise awareness that if we can do it in the air
of course everybody can do it on the ground.” Piccard gradually piloted
the plane towards 3,600 metres (11,800 feet) as he headed to Seville in
southern Spain at about 40 kph (25 mph).
He was then to cross the Strait of Gibraltar at 8,500 metres (28,000
feet), enter Moroccan airspace over Tangiers and land at Rabat-Sale
airport some time after 11 pm (2200 GMT).
All that, without using a drop of fuel.
Each of the motors on the carbon-fibre plane charges 400-kilogram
(880-pound) lithium polymer batteries during the day, allowing the
aircraft to carry on flying after dark.
“I think the challenge is really the first intercontinental flight on
solar power,” Piccard said.
“We will leave Europe to enter into Africa crossing the Strait of
Gibraltar and also bringing a message of inspiration for the Moroccan
agency for solar agency which is preparing a huge and very ambitions
solar energy programme for Morocco.” Organisers said the trip, 2,500
kilometres (1,550 miles) overall, is timed to coincide with the launch
of construction on the largest ever solar thermal plant in Morocco's
southern Ouarzazate region.
Piccard, who made the world's first non-stop round-the-world balloon
flight in 1999 together with Briton Brian Jones, took over the controls
from project co-founder Andre Borschberg, a 59-year-old Swiss executive
and pilot.
Borschberg flew a first leg from Payerne in Switzerland, landing in
Madrid on May 25.
The voyage also is intended as a rehearsal for the plane's
round-the-world flight planned for 2014.
The aircraft made history in July 2010 as the first manned plane to
fly around the clock on the sun's energy.
It holds the record for the longest flight by a manned solar-powered
aeroplane after staying aloft for 26 hours, 10 minutes and 19 seconds
above Switzerland, also setting a record for altitude by flying at 9,235
metres (30,298 feet).
AFP |