Solar Impulse 2 leaves Cairo for Abu Dhabi

Solar Impulse 2 has embarked on its last leg of the journey in its record-breaking attempt, taking off from the Egyptian capital city of Cairo early on Sunday morning as it heads for the final landing in Abu Dhabi.

The plane is en route to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, where its epic journey originated over a year ago.

On the Solar Impulse blog, the Mission Control Center team said they “identified a weather window that could allow us to overcome the challenging high temperatures across Saudi Arabia and hopefully land in Abu Dhabi after 48 hours”.

This last flight had to be postponed for a week because the winds were too strong, and because the pilot – Swiss psychiatrist-adventurer Bertrand Piccard – wasn’t feeling well enough to take on the grueling flight.

The project’s other co-founder and co-pilot Andre Borschberg described the flight as “living the final moments of a once in a lifetime adventure contributing to setting a new milestone in aviation” based on clean and efficient technologies rather than speed or height.

For the final stretch of the journey, Pilot Bertrand Piccard will be behind the wheels.

“The round the world flight ends in Abu Dhabi, but not the project”, Piccard told Reuters a few days before takeoff. “I saw the balloons, the airships, the hot air balloons, steamboats – you know, every means of transportation wanted to cross the Atlantic, and now for the first time it’s a solar-powered airplane”, he said.

“To have flown more than 40,000 kilometres powered only by the sun shows that solar energy has truly arrived as a viable technology, and has significant potential for wider development”, said Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Masdar.

The Cairo-Seville leg was the 16th of the tour, which started in March 2015 in Abu Dhabi.

The Solar Impulse aircraft made history in 2010 as the first solar plane to fly through the night. “It’s precisely here that started my dream of making another circumnavigation, but this time without fuel, only on solar power”.

The solar plane’s adventure proves the vast potential of renewable energy, according to Piccard.