A pioneering aircraft attempting to circumnavigate the globe powered only by the sun yesterday took off in China for the next stage of its journey, organizers said.
The Solar Impulse 2’s departure from Chongqing, China, came after repeated meteorological delays and one of its copilots returned to Europe for medical reasons.
With pilot Bertrand Piccard at the controls, the aircraft took off at 6:08am, heading for China’s eastern city of Nanjing, organizers said in a statement. The 1,190km flight was expected to take about 20 hours.
Photo: Reuters
The Solar Impulse 2 arrived at an airport in Chongqing from Myanmar on March 31.
It had been due to make a brief stop in the southwestern Chinese city and travel on to Nanjing, but was held up by weather and safety concerns.
Chongqing, on the Yangtze River, is notoriously foggy, but Solar Impulse 2 spokesman Marc Baumgarten said the initial delay was due to “crosswinds, which are covering the entire country.”
Another departure attempt on Thursday last week was foiled “due to a narrow window for the landing in Nanjing,” according to an update last week on the solar plane’s Twitter account.
Copilot Andre Borschberg is being treated in Switzerland for migraine problems.
“It was necessary for me to achieve detachment, to take a break in order to ensure the future of the project,” Borschberg tweeted on Monday.
The team behind Solar Impulse 2, which has more than 17,000 solar cells built into its wings, hopes to promote green energy with its round-the-world attempt.
The plane is the successor of Solar Impulse, which notched up a 26-hour flight in 2010, proving its ability to store enough power in lithium batteries during the day to keep flying at night.
On a previous circumnavigation, Piccard passed over China in a specially designed balloon, but only after he personally negotiated conditions requiring the craft to avoid large swathes of the nation.
Ridiculed by the aviation industry when it was first unveiled, the Solar Impulse venture has since been hailed around the world, including by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The plane’s maiden global circumnavigation began in Abu Dhabi and is scheduled to take in 12 stops, with a total flight time of about 25 days spread over five months.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not