Solar-powered plane lands in Spain

With the success of this challenging crossing, Solar Impulse has completed the 15th leg of a round-the-world trip aimed at promoting clean, renewable energy.

A plane powered entirely by the sun made history in the wee hours of Thursday morning after landing in Spain following a 70-hour flight across the Atlantic.

The solar-powered plane flew at a maximum altitude of 28,000 feet and an average speed of 59 miles per hour during the three-day flight.

“Everybody has tried to cross the Atlantic, with sailboats, steamboats, airships, aeroplanes, even rowing boats and kitesurfs”, Piccard continued.

The single-seat fuel-free plane took off from NY early Monday with Solar Impulse co-founder Bertrand Piccard in the cockpit.

The Swiss-led Solar Impulse team says the outbound trip from Seville will head for either Egypt or Greece, depending on the weather.

Although Lindbergh wasn’t the first to cross the Atlantic by air – that feat was performed by John Alcock and Arthur Brown, who flew from Newfoundland to Ireland eight years earlier – Lindbergh was the first to go solo and nearly doubled the distance of the aforementioned ocean flight in his 5810km journey from NY to Paris.

The wings of Solar Impulse 2, which stretch wider than those of a Boeing 747, are equipped with 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries.

Solar Impulse has moved rapidly around the Earth since renewing its challenge in Hawaii on April 21. The pilots do sleep while they’re up in the air, but usually just for 20 minutes at a time (the telemetry data for one flight showed 10 catnaps of 20 minutes over a 24-hour period). The “new” world is the world of modern clean technologies that can halve our global energy consumption, save natural resources and improve our quality of life.

The full journey, which has been interrupted for fundraising and repairs, is estimated to take some 500 flight hours and cover 35,000km, with pilots Piccard and Andre Borschberg landing every few days to switch between piloting and hosting public events. The team will now have to calculate a route to their final destination of Abu Dhabi. The plane set out on March 9, 2015, from Abu Dhabi and has traveled across Asia and the Pacific without a drop of fuel.