Pioneering Swiss solar-powered aircraft Solar Impulse landed in Brussels on Friday after completing its first international flight, 13 hours after it took off from Switzerland.
“I captured more energy than I used,” said pilot Andre Borschberg as he descended from the plane amid the applause of hundreds of people including Belgium’s Crown Prince Philippe, who had followed Solar Impulse’s long descent from a helicopter.
“I flew with the power of a scooter,” Borschberg added.
Photo: Reuters
“This is wonderful,” said Bertrand Piccard, joint founder and president of the Solar Impulse project.
The single-seater had lifted off gently in clear blue skies from Payerne airbase at 8:40am after being delayed by early morning mist.
It covered the roughly 480km from western Switzerland to Brussels airport, flying over France and Luxembourg at 3,600m.
Photo: AFP
“With this flight, we would like to encourage politicians to opt for more ambitious energy policies,” Piccard said before the aircraft landed.
He also called for “a change in mentalities to encourage people to use new [green] technologies” and stop wasting fossil energies.
“It is crazy that mankind wastes a billion tonnes of oil an hour,” he added. “Who wants to believe that we will keep planes that burn up so much fuel?”
“The flight is going really well, I have just flown over Liege, it’s a real pleasure to enter Belgian airspace,” Borschberg said as the dragonfly-like experimental and emissions-free aircraft cruised at 50kph.
“The view I have here is extraordinary,” the Swiss pilot added in a live feed over the Internet. “I’m above the clouds, for now I’m taking advantage of the blue sky.”
Solar Impulse HB-SIA, which has the wingspan of a large airliner, but weighs no more than a sedan, made history in July last year as the first manned plane to fly around the clock and through the night on the sun’s energy.
It holds the endurance and altitude records for a manned solar-powered airplane after staying aloft for 26 hours, 10 minutes and 19 seconds above -Switzerland, flying at 9,235m.
The high-tech plane has since flown several times, notably between Geneva and Zurich airports, but the journey to a busy airport in Brussels through crowded airspace was regarded as a new test.
“Flying an aircraft like Solar Impulse through European airspace to land at an international airport is an incredible challenge for all of us, and success depends on the support we receive from all the authorities concerned,” said Borschberg, who also piloted July’s flight.
The HB-SIA relies on 12,000 solar cells on its 64m wings to charge the batteries that provide the energy for the 10-horsepower electric motors driving four propellers. Its record-breaking flight last year demonstrated its capacity to store up enough energy to fly through a summer night.
The showcase for green technology will be on display at Brussels airport until May 29 before flying to the international air show at Le Bourget in Paris from June 20 to June 26.
“This time, we have a real airplane — flying —- proof that new technologies can reduce our dependence on fossil energy,” Piccard said.
The Solar Impulse team is planning to fly even further, including possible transamerican, transatlantic and round-the-world flights — in stages — in 2013 and 2014 using a slightly larger aircraft.
Asked about upping the speed, Borschberg said: “That’s not the aim of this plane for now.”
Piccard, himself the first man along with Briton Brian Jones to fly non-stop around the world in a balloon, comes from a dynasty of pioneers.
His grandfather Auguste Piccard twice beat the record for reaching the highest altitude in a balloon, in 1931 to 1932.
His late father Jacques Piccard was a deep sea explorer who holds the record for traveling to the deepest point underwater, 10,916m below sea level in the Marianas Trench in the Pacific.
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
Nintendo Co hopes to match the runaway success of the Switch when its leveled-up new console hits shelves on Thursday, with strong early sales expected despite the gadget’s high price. Featuring a bigger screen and more processing power, the Switch 2 is an upgrade to its predecessor, which has sold 152 million units since launching in 2017 — making it the third-best-selling video game console of all time. However, despite buzz among fans and robust demand for pre-orders, headwinds for Nintendo include uncertainty over US trade tariffs and whether enough people are willing to shell out. The Switch 2 “is priced relatively high”
RSS