We recently posted about a press conference we recently attended at Moffett Field outside San Francisco, California for a close-up look at Solar Impulse, the world’s most advanced solar-powered airplane. The preparations for the Solar Impulse Across America adventure have now come to fruition and the graceful bird took off early this morning into clear Bay Area skies. Solar Impulse will cross the US making 5 stops along the way, reaching its first stop at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport tomorrow, May 4th at about 1am, for an estimated flight time of 19 hours.
Subsequent stops include Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport; Lambert-St. Louis International Airport; Dulles International Airport and a final stop at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. At each stop Solar Impulse will be on display for the public to see the groundbreaking airplane as it kicks off the Clean Generation initiative to raise awareness of the potential of clean and renewable sources of energy.
Follow progress of Solar Impulse live and stay tuned as we track progress of the airplane as she makes her way across the country in the coming weeks.
Featured image credit: Dominique Favre
The Solar Impulse is certainly not the first solar-powered airplane; check Wikipedia under “solar-powered airplane” for a timeline. For example, the first solar-powered airplane flight across the USA was done by an American, Eric Raymond, in a craft named “Sunseeker”, twenty-three years ago. The first piloted solar-powered airplanes were flown over thirty years ago, notably “Solar Challenger” that flew from France to England in 1981 entirely on direct-solar power without any storage batteries.